The Art

For this exceptional event, we work with Dutch artist Carlijn Kingma, a cartographer of society. Unlike traditional cartography, she creates maps of mindscapes: imaginary worlds, continents and universes to analyse the mechanisms by which we run our society – such as politics, religion, capitalism, education.

Finally, she reassembles them as new fictional worlds, in the hope of finding new paths towards a better future, open-ended beyond current concepts of art or architecture.

If you think of money as water, then our financial system is like an irrigation system, watering the economy. And just as irrigation helps crops grow, money allows the economy to flourish. As long as the money keeps flowing, society will thrive—or at least that’s the idea. In reality, large swaths of society remain parched, while a small group of people is swimming in money.

Who creates and allocates our money? Where all does it go? And why doesn’t the financial system work for everyone? These questions are at the heart of The Waterworks of Money, the latest work by cartographer Carlijn Kingma, in collaboration with financial economists Thomas Bollen and Martijn van der Linden. They lead you through a watery world where money is in motion, its hidden forces made manifest.