Workshop "The Mass of Money - Strategies from art and science on capital and inequality"

On June 4 and 5, 2026, Juliane Götz and Sebastian Neitsch (artist duo Quadrature) together with Nelly Saibel (Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden), David Braun (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main) and Felix Reith (University of Bonn) are organizing a participatory workshop on the dynamics of capital accumulation and its social consequences at the TUD Dresden University of Technology (TUD). In cooperation with researchers and stakeholders from sociology, economics, mathematics and art, the workshop combines theoretical analysis, data science and speculative practice. Organization and curatorial support: Pauline Hohn, Gwendolin Kremer and Celina Wagenknecht.

Program Workshop "The Mass of Money - Strategies from Art and Science on Capital and Inequality"

Thursday, 04.06.2026
THEORY

10:00 Arrival and registration
10:30 

• Welcome (Pauline Hohn and Gwendolin Kremer, Schaufler Residency@TU Dresden)
• Introduction The Mass of Money (Juliane Götz and Sebastian Neitsch aka Quadrature, Schaufler Residency@TU Dresden 2026)
• Status report (David Braun, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, and Felix Reith, University of Bonn)

11:00 Panel 1: INEQUALITY - in different areas?

• Who owns Germany? Wealth data, inequality and regional differences (Franziska Deckstein and Leona Krause (Chair of Public Economics, Leipzig University)
• (How) (much) can education contribute to reducing inequality? (Alexander Kemnitz, Professor of Economics, in particular Economic Policy and Economic Research, TUD)

Discussion

12:00 Performance Physical Representation of Inequality (Anli Lukunku, artist and master student, Dresden University of Fine Arts)

12:45  Lunch break

14:00 Panel 2: How did we get there? The role of the financial markets

• Financialization and the decoupling of the real and financial economy (David Braun and Felix Reith)
• Planet or profit: Where should our money go? (Lars Hornuf, Professor of Business Administration, esp. Finance and Financial Technology, TUD)

Discussion

15:00 Break

15:30 Panel 3: Deconstruction of existing narratives

• Artistic perspectives on capitalism and inequality (Juliane Götz and Sebastian Neitsch)
• A brief history of Bitcoin (Nelly Saibel, Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden, and Norman Zidlicky, Synosys, TUD)
• tba

Discussion

17:00 Wrap-up and outlook for day 2
18:00: Conclusion with pizza and drinks

Friday, 05.06.2026
PRACTICE

10:00 Arrival and welcome

10:30 Warm-up: Reflection on own roles and privileges (Cläre Caspar, Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Department of Culture and Design)

11:00 Workshops

• A: Financial systems of the future: Between pragmatism and utopia (David Braun and Felix Reith)
• B: Wild Thinking with Data (Juliane Götz and Sebastian Neitsch)

12:30 Lunch break

13:30 Workshop Dresden and Kinshasa. Perspectives on Inequality and Capitalism in Dialogue (Anli Lukunku)

15:00 Break

15:30 Wrap-up & farewell

About the workshop:

The workshop "The Mass of Money - Strategies from Art and Science on Capital and Inequality" is dedicated to the cultural, aesthetic and political dimensions of contemporary financial and capital structures. The two-day event is part of the Schaufler Residency@TU Dresden 2026 by the artist duo Quadrature (Juliane Götz and Sebastian Neitsch) and brings together researchers and stakeholders from the fields of art, economics, mathematics, sociology and data science in a transdisciplinary exchange.

The starting point is the artistic project "The Mass of Money", in which Quadrature examines the logic of global financial flows, processes of capital accumulation and the structural conditions of social inequality. The artist duo combines data-based analysis with immersive audiovisual processes and cosmological reference systems and develops forms of artistic visualization that make economic dynamics tangible as culturally shaped orders of knowledge and perception. The focus is on the question of how abstract and often invisible processes of capital can be made visible, spatially tangible and critically reflectable.

The participatory workshop sees itself as an experimental space for thinking and working at the interface of artistic research and scientific analysis. In lectures, discussions and joint working formats, narrative and image-political structures of value, wealth and financial abstraction will be negotiated, as will the social implications of data-driven financial systems and algorithmic control mechanisms. At the same time, the event examines the role of artistic practices within contemporary knowledge production and asks how art can open up new perspectives on economic power relations and global transformation processes.

The Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden, a project of TUD Dresden University of Technology and The Schaufler Foundation, is a lively forum for forward-looking dialog between science, art and society. Here, young scientists and artists work together across disciplinary boundaries to question current technologies, their origins and their impact on the modern world.