Insurgent Finances: An Interview with Gabriela Ceja and Fran Ilich

Abstract

When the financial crisis of 2008 exposed the opaque workings of global financial markets, it led to calls for alternate economic models to replace the excesses of contemporary capitalism. A decade on, it can seem that those calls went unheeded. However, in the collaborative social practice of Fran Ilich (b. 1975) and Gabriela Ceja (b. 1984), sustainable alternatives modeled on ancient modes of exchange are being developed with projects that are deeply embedded in economic practice; whether that is running a functioning microbank complete with complex financial instruments in Spacebank or serving Zapatista coffee from Chiapas, Mexico in the Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op in the Bronx in New York City. In this interview the artists discuss how, through building alternative durable and sustainable economies and exchange networks, another world is possible.