September 21 - October 27, 2012

Opening reception: September 21, 6 - 8 pm

Gallery hours: Wednesday through Saturday, 12 - 6 pm

Events with: Arts & Labor, Richard Dienst, Jennifer Flores Sternad, Fran Ilich, Randy Martin, Annie McClanahan, Occupy University, Cassie Thornton, and Caroline Woolard

Infographics by: Brendan Griffiths, Zak Klauck & Mylinh Trieu Nguyen

Organized by: Leigh Claire La Berge & Laurel Ptak with assistance from designer Eric Nylund & intern Gina Bull

Debt has been inscribed as a fundamental mechanism of power, force and subjugation in contemporary society and it affects nearly all of us in one way or another through forms like credit card, healthcare, student and mortgage debt as well as our national debt and the indebtedness of nations to one another. While debt is front and center as an issue in both politics and our personal lives, the basis of its control seems directly related to the fact that it is experienced so abstractly. Debt exists as both an absence and a presence. And though debt is socially enforced it is almost always individually experienced and this tension makes it difficult to represent collectively. To Have And To Owe asks, what happens if we work towards undoing debt’s unrepresentabilty? What if we experienced debt as a shared cultural form that is perceptible, communicable or materialized? How can debt be rendered as a nuanced historical, philosophical and even aesthetic problem in all of its social thickness inside American life?