Company Drinks is featured as part of the "Economics the Blockbuster" exhibition that presents a selection of art projects that operate as real-world economic systems.
This is a group exhibition showing 6 projects that started as cultural initiatives, and continue as community led economies which use trade to re-organise distribution and profits.
We are showing our archive of all different drinks made to since 2014, using the special shelf design by Sahra Hersi for our Club Room. Kathrin together with Kuba (as the Centre for Plausible Economies) have been involved in the curation of the show for the last two years years. All the art projects in the exhibition propose new ways of ‘doing business’, driven by the needs and concerns of the communities in which they are created. Kathrin and Kuba are also organising a Drawing Room within “Economics the Blockbuster” with iconic images of economic models that are familiar, and the invitation to draw economic models we want for the future.
From the Economics the Blockbuster website:
Economy includes many things, from the exchange of gifts to caring for others, building trust and sustaining the environment. It happens not only in factories, shops, or offices but in parks, on the streets, and in museums. Building on the Whitworth’s ongoing commitment to being a useful museum driven by a civic purpose, this project addresses economics as a social and financial set of relations that we all take part in.
From a community-led drinks company to an art collective reclaiming plantation land, the exhibition includes new artist commissions, merchandise with a purpose, business collaborations and a live program.
Bringing together existing and new works, the exhibition draws on global strategies explored by artists and arts organisations including: Association de Arte Útil, Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) and Renzo Martens, Company Drinks, Goldin+Senneby, Kathrin Böhm and Kuba Szreder (Centre for Plausible Economies), lumbung Kios, Owen Griffiths and Alessandra Saviotti, Rosalie Schweiker, The Alternative School of Economics and Tŷ Pawb.
Responding directly to the failures and limits of current systems, Economics the Blockbuster creates ideas for other ways of being.
A project by the Whitworth, The University of Manchester, and presented as part of Manchester International Festival.
