Theorist Richard Dienst will consider the social worlds created by debt and look at indebtedness as a form of social, economic and political bond—as explored in his recent book The Bonds of Debt: Borrowing Against the Common Good (Verso, 2011). This event is organized in conjunction with the exhibition To Have and To Owe.

Richard Dienst is the author of The Bonds of Debt: Borrowing Against the Common Good (Verso Books, 2011), among other titles.  He has published essays on contemporary theory, visual media, Bertolt Brecht, and Jean-Luc Godard in print and online journals including Historical Materialism and the Journal of Visual Culture and in anthologies (including New Media/Old Media [ed. Chun and Keenan, Routledge 2006]). His current book project, Remains to be Seen, will present a series of theoretical lessons about visual media, aimed at new practices of image-making and cultural activism. His blog collects his curent writing about the contemporary debt crisis:www.bondsofdebt.wordpress.com.  He holds degrees from University of California, Berkeley and Duke University and is currently Associate Professor of English at Rutgers.