Invited by Former West Research Congress, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin is turned into a stage for a pitch that introduces the speculative hegdefund / financial activist tool shortingart.com.

The presentation of the tool’s mechanics with its goal of financially stabilizing precarious cultural workers while simultaneously 'aestheticizing' finance is embedded in a research-based narrative. Moving between fact and fiction, it draws a connection between the collection of contemporary art, the auction house Sotheby’s as a central player on the international art market, Steven A. Cohen, a hedgefund-billionaire and major shareholder of Sotheby’s stock, and recurring movements on international stock markets.

It is argued that the conflation of certain issues in this relational web renders markets volatile to such an extent that they can be busted and remodeled by employing our financial hacking strategy.