report

Yazan Khalili

Interviewed by Inte Gloerich on 11 November 2024.

The economy is not just for economists. Or, reclaiming debt as a form of communal wealth

Yazan Khalili is an artist, architect, and cultural activist living in and out of Palestine. He was the artistic director of the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramallah between 2015 and 2019. He is a co-founder of Radio Alhara, https://www.radioalhara.net/. and currently is a PhD candidate at Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, and a member of The Question of Funding (QoF) collective. https://thequestionoffunding.com/. This collective brings together cultural producers and community organisers from Palestine to rethink the economy of funding and how it affects cultural production both in Palestine and the world. In the context of the Documenta 15 exhibition, QoF developed Dayra, https://thequestionoffunding.com/How-can-Dayra-allow-us-to-make-use-of-existing-local-resources-1. a DAO-based economic model to appreciate and share communal wealth in the absence of money. In our conversation, we discussed how DAOs relate to the nation-state and how they could facilitate communities to organise outside of these top-down structures. Yazan lays bare the dynamics of the crisis economy in Palestine. He shows that rather than an exceptional situation, the cultural economy of Palestine is an extreme example of what is taking shape in Western Europe and the world. This means that the situated knowledge from Palestine is fundamental for the wider world. Ultimately, Yazan makes a case for pushing the crisis to its limits in order to radically rethink the logics through which our societies function. Dayra is attempting exactly this.

To function beyond, above, and below the state

Inte Gloerich What is a DAO to you? Why is DAO technology interesting to you?

Yazan Khalili Regardless of its technological or financial meaning — which often dominates the conversation about DAOs — for me, DAOs allow for the possibility of thinking beyond the limitations of the nation-state and neoliberal economy. I am interested in trying to imagine liberation beyond these frameworks. This is informed by the context of Palestine specifically, where Palestinians must struggle on three levels: against the state of Israel as an occupier, for the Palestinian state as a way to achieve rights within a world dominated by state structures, and against The State as such as an apparatus of dominance. These are, I think, the conditions we are working under, especially while a genocide is ongoing.

A central question in our work is how we can bring back the social relations and systems of trust that got lost in contemporary economies and state formations. This question also features prominently in Dayra. DAOs are interesting to me because they address a level that is simultaneously underneath and above the state, but never on the level of the state itself. Underneath the state are social relations. At this level, we can ask questions about how we want to live together, what a local community functions like, or how local economies work. DAOs also function above the state because they can jump over their borders and systems of control, and rethink global relations through deep locality. With DAOs, it is possible to create economies that are not based on state structures and to address these two levels simultaneously.

With Dayra, every community can define its own boundaries. This is facilitated by the design of the system: we are setting Dayra up in such a way that you cannot extract value from one community to another. Value is locally produced through the exchange of wealth within a particular community, and it is designed so that it never leaves that community. This is because we want to prevent people from getting incentivised to produce more Dayra just for the sake of exchanging them, as the next step after that would be to extract Dayras from their local communities and start to speculate with them. Instead, we are trying to define (trans)local structures and maintain them, meaning that a Dayra is intentionally small. This does not mean they have to be in the same physical place, though. For example, a group of graphic designers using Dayra could work from around the world. But a group of local farmers can also define the limits of their Dayra to their own small village. What is important to understand is that these Dayras are not the same.

IG Is Dayra still ongoing?

YK Well, it has begun moving again! But it is important not to make it bigger than it is. We are still small, and we are still in the process of trying things out. Right now, anyone creating work from or dealing with Palestine immediately gets a lot of attention. This is simultaneously a good and a bad thing. Palestine is an extreme place, politically and culturally, which means that small acts in cultural and social movements have to deal with a huge international structure. This work is essential, so on the one hand it is great when these acts get picked up in the media and are brought to the forefront. On the other hand, this sometimes happens too quickly. Projects are pushed too far, too quickly when they still need to make baby steps. Dayra is somewhere in the middle of those steps.

We are approaching the process of developing Darya by not being too involved with the technology immediately. When you focus too much on the technology, it can turn into a necessity in and of itself. Instead of technology, what we really need is to rethink cultural and political questions. With Dayra, we were interested in addressing the politics of funding and the economics of cultural practices. In the process, we found out that we sometimes had to push developers outside of their comfort zone, because they often immediately wanted to come up with solutions. However, we were not interested in quick answers or in creating a crypto economy. We wanted to sit with the developers, to work together in a bottom-up way while being aware that it will be a long process and we do not know exactly where it will lead us.

We started by researching alternative past and present socio-economic models and by thinking about which ones we wanted to take into the future. This process was about bridging an economic knowledge gap: how can we bring economic models that functioned in the social structures that existed before the neoliberal economy into contemporary life? What kind of infrastructures and social relations are needed? How can trust be enacted in contemporary settings? What know-how is needed to engage in these economies? There are so many questions to think about!

At the same time, we were also engaging with contemporary questions about funding, the economy, and survival in a time in which everything is financialised and monetised. Often, these sorts of questions are reserved for economists, but the economy is all around us, and we all have insights about it! We should all be able to weigh in. When value is equated with financial value, social value gets obscured in the process. In response, with Dayra we want to find ways to regain the capacity to define our own ways of living within these broader contexts.

Debt as a form of communal wealth

IG I wanted to ask you about the introductory video for Dayra. The video opens with a statement: “Not having a measuring tape to measure a table, does not mean the table does not exist.” Dayra. 2022. “Dayra — How it works?” Vimeo video. https://vimeo.com/721710848. What did you want to evoke with this framing?

YK Both Dayra and fiat money are tools through which a community measures, stores, and exchanges wealth, but the important thing to remember is that wealth exists outside of those tools. The measuring tape — whether this is Dayra, money, or something else – can certainly be useful, but the communal wealth that exists in societies goes beyond what the measuring tape can measure. With Dayra, we are interested in measuring social relations rather than assets. So, if we go back to the metaphor of the table: Dayra is not about measuring the table itself, but about measuring the act of sharing the table. As an object, the table has no value or meaning until it is shared. Once that happens, the table enters into the Dayra system, and it is recognised as part of a communal wealth that takes the shape of practices of sharing.

IG Dayra also frames debt as a form of communal wealth. Can you explain your thinking around this?

YK Luckily, we are not economists, so we have the freedom to play with these terms! Terms like ‘debt’ dominate our lives, yet we have little agency over them. As cultural producers, we wanted to find ways to open up what such terms mean and to use them in a way that challenges the dominant structures through which money is produced.

The way we see it, being indebted to your community is how that community is created and sustained. Mutual indebtedness builds communal relations that are dynamic and strong. It creates interdependence rather than independence. This is another term that we would like to reconsider: being dependent is often framed as a negative thing, especially in the context of national struggles and foreign domination, but on another level, we are all always dependent on something or someone. No one lives in a vacuum. We have to ask what we want to be dependent on. With Dayra, we think of being dependent as part of what makes social relations work. Rather than dealing with big institutional questions related to the banking system or the monetary economy, Dayra addresses the economy as a question of social relations.

As I briefly mentioned above, we are researching different socio-economic models of indebtedness. There are so many examples, and they have already existed for ages! One example is the practice of keeping village notebooks, Ad Dafter الدفتر in Arabic. The way it works is that when people do not have money at a particular moment but still need to buy things in their local village shops, the shop writes this debt down in a notebook. This can only happen because the people involved know and trust each other. An outsider would not be able to make use of this system of indebtedness. What may sound surprising from the perspective of the individualism of the neoliberal economy is that both the shopkeeper and the buyer protect the notebook. For example, I used to work with someone who lived in a small village and often bought things from a local shop. When the shop burnt down, the notebook in which his debts were logged was lost too. Rather than taking the opportunity to be released of his debts without paying them, he went back to the shop and paid the debts anyway. Although the notebook is a way to log debt, what makes the system work is the system of trust that exists around it. Both parties know that they depend on this trust relationship to make a living, so even when the notebook is gone, they honour this trust. This kind of system used to exist here in Amsterdam too, but it has almost completely disappeared. In places like Palestine and Lebanon, it is still all around.

Another example is called An-nqoot النقوط , or, the ‘dripping system.’ At Palestinian weddings, people put money in an envelope and give it to the newlywed. This way, the cost of the wedding is communally shared. All contributions are registered and passed down from generation to generation, creating an ongoing communal system of debt.

Then there is Owneh عونة which means ‘to help out.’ This practice does not involve money itself but rather people’s efforts to help each other out. For example, when you are building something at your house, and you need to pour concrete, you cannot do this job alone. You need fast action and many people helping out at the same time. Through the practice of Owneh, a community comes together to share the work in such moments. This used to be announced publicly and scheduled after Friday prayers so that people come to the prayers prepared to help each other out afterward.

Another practice that I learned about is called Mqarazza مقارظة which literally means ‘indebtedness.’ This one takes place in small production economies, such as villages with a few small farmers that each have some sheep or goats. Each farmer’s animals do not produce enough milk to make cheese from, so the farmers pool their milk in order to make cheese in turns. Every day, the collected milk goes to a different home. The farms that are waiting for their turn have to trust the others to bring them their milk in the future. In effect, this is a process of sharing existing wealth communally.

The last one is called Jameyaat جمعيات , These are women’s or employees’ associations in which members agree to put a set amount of money into a shared box each month. Let’s say there are ten members and they each put in €100 at the beginning of the month. The community collectively decides on a schedule so that every month someone else is allowed to take the collected money out. Basically, this is a communal saving system. We used to do this in class when I was in school! Of course, it takes a lot of trust relations, especially if you are the last one in the schedule.

All these systems exist with different nuances, at different moments in time, and in different communities. We can learn from the past, but this does not mean that these practices should be copied one-to-one. New systems might take shape in the future based on this knowledge of the past. We have to think about how to create bridges between past practices and future economic systems.

IG On the one hand, Dayra is a project that is situated in the specific context of the economy of cultural funding in Palestine, but on the other hand, it is relevant beyond that because we can recognise many of the same dynamics in places like Western Europe. A lot of those social relations that you described above are eroding because of the individualising logics of the neoliberalist economy. Is part of what you are doing with Dayra also creating a system that could protect these different forms of trust relations in the face of the threat of erosion?

YK Yes, because that erosion is bringing with it total dependence on the banking system. Money is so important in the neoliberal economy. There is hardly any other measuring tape left, the only way to understand wealth is by measuring it with money. Because this money works through financial structures, the banking system, and nation-states, it has become a system of control. We have lost our agency to deal with wealth and knowledge in different, community-based ways, to share wealth among our community, and to think of social relations beyond monetary value. So our question is: how do we exchange value outside of money? How do we live together and collectively store, annotate, and exchange wealth when we do not have access to money? Remember: this exchange is in itself a form of wealth! Think about the milk that is shared between families. The wealth of their trust is stored in their memory and their social relations. Thinking beyond the village, we ask how we could support these kinds of trust relationships in contemporary social settings and whether contemporary technologies could support these processes.

In Palestine, we see that money has become a tool of domination and control through the structures of funding that are in place. In this sense, Palestine is an extreme case of how financial funding affects political agendas and ideologies. Think for example of the way funding is currently utilised as a tool of censorship in Europe. We have already seen this for a long time in Palestine. The Palestinian Authority was established in the 90s and with it, the donor economy emerged. This meant that grassroots organisations had to turn into NGOs in order to receive international funding. These new structures of funding changed the social and cultural relations of the society, centering it around the donors’ agenda rather than the communal needs and the political aspirations of the people. This meant that cultural actors slowly got distanced and alienated from the communities in which they were working.

IG I have heard you describe it also as a crisis economy. Khalili, Yazan, Candela Cubria, and Sepp Eckenhaussen. 2024. “Yazan Khalili and the Crisis Economy.” Art in Permacrisis Podcast (4). https://soundcloud.com/networkcultures/art-in-permacrisis-4-yazan-khalili. What do you mean by this term?

YK This economy is a product of crisis, but it also produces crisis. Many economists write about this phenomenon. For example, Naomi Klein uses the term ‘disaster capitalism’ to describe a similar idea. Klein, N. 2007. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Toronto: Knopf Canada. The idea of the crisis economy means that being in crisis becomes the central requirement for receiving funding. When you apply for funding, you have to argue that you are the one that is most in crisis. Ultimately, what this structure of funding does is sustain the crisis instead of overcoming the crisis. For more on the crisis economy, see Khalili, Yazan, Lara Khaldi, and Marwa Arsanios. 2020. “What We Talk about When We Talk about Crisis: A Conversation, Part 1 and 2.” E-flux journal (111). https://www.e-flux.com/journal/111/346846/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-crisis-a-conversation-part-1/.

I remember that during the Arab Spring, Palestine dropped from the global consciousness as an emergency. Its state of crisis was not sufficient anymore in comparison to other Arab countries. Of course, right now Palestine is the crisis. This shows how extreme the crisis needs to be to receive funding. And it shows that crisis is treated as an event, rather than a persistent reality that we live among. This brings with it a particular kind of money and a particular kind of economic power dynamic. For example, the humanitarian aid that is coming into Palestine at the moment creates a lot of employment for people who can bring local expertise to international NGOs. In the process, a new class of people that are hired and paid good money by these NGOs emerges. Ultimately, the support that comes into Palestine establishes itself as a superstructure, placing the NGOs at the centre of a humanitarian aid economy.

However, this is always connected to the crisis as an event and dissolves as soon as another crisis takes centre stage. Funding that is made available in the crisis economy is never able to target the underlying reality of the persisting crisis, because to work on that level, requires radical rethinking. It means doing the political and ideological work of imagining a different future beyond the horizons of the event that is recognised by the crisis economy. This process of reimagining takes slow, organic, and social practices, connections, and engagements beyond the crisis as an event. We need to question fundamental assumptions about society, the economy, and social relations in order to build something truly different and more resilient. Every time these extreme situations erupt, they break your backbone, they make you unable to think beyond the present because all your efforts are directed at the need to survive. But we also need to work at a slower pace to figure out what kind of future we want. What do we want society to look like in the future? What do we mean by liberation?

IG Can the crisis also be a moment of opportunity, a rupture through which another world becomes possible?

YK Yes. The crisis is there, it is ongoing. It just reveals itself in particular moments, seemingly out of nowhere. This is the moment in which the contradictions that permeate society cannot be maintained anymore and the crisis breaks open. Some people might say that we need to eliminate the crisis, but I am for deepening its contradictions and going through it. We need to keep pushing the crisis so that it appears in the open and becomes undeniable.

I have to be honest and say that I am a pessimist. I do not function on hope, because hope makes you passive. It tricks you into believing that eventually, things will be better. No! They will not get better! I am hopeless, which means that I must keep moving in search of something better, but this better thing is not guaranteed. Working for a better future does not mean we will achieve it, but it means that we refuse this current situation. Right now, we are in a horrible phase, which means that we have to keep moving. We need to go through the horribleness, through the pessimism, and through the hopelessness.

Speaking to the world by speaking to the community

IG How has the crisis economy affected the kinds of art and cultural work that have been funded since the 90s in Palestine?

YK Most of the cultural practices in Palestine from the 90s onward were about opening outward and exposure to the world. However, it is important to consider what else could be done. For example, the opposite would be to have cultural practices that are localised and that open inwardly. There is an economy between these two, and the underlying debate is about whether liberation comes from speaking to the world and fitting within an international narrative, or whether it comes from grassroots work that engages local cultures in imagining their future. In Arabic we use the word Sumud صمود for this, meaning steadfastness, resilience.

I believe that rather than speaking to the world first and foremost, the role of culture is to speak to the community. I do not say this in a conservative, right-wing way that is about closing doors to others and about only speaking to those who are similar to yourself. Palestine is a small place in the global periphery, but because of its extreme situation, it has become central. The practices that come out of Palestine are not just experiments. These local dynamics create something essential for the world. The more you dive inwards — the more you economically, culturally, and productively depend on your local community — the more new forms of arts and culture will take shape. These situated forms are more meaningful to the world than what can be done by applying or adopting globalised, and mostly Euro-centric forms of arts and culture.

There is a huge cultural crisis in the economy of culture. What is happening in Palestine now is key to understanding what is happening in the Netherlands and Western Europe as well. The political shifts to the right wing and the way in which funding structures are changing affect what people understand as the role of cultural practitioners. The ongoing shift from welfare states to neoliberal economies will break things and this is going to be painful. In this sense, I believe Palestine is an extreme example of how the Netherlands will be moving in the future as well.

Everywhere, finance and state funding have become essential for culture. In this context, it is crucial that cultural institutions rethink the economies they are part of. In Palestine, this question is immediate, there is no way around it. The Question of Funding collective — of which I am a member — has always tried to critique funding structures in Palestine and work towards different ways of funding culture. For more on rethinking cultural institutions, see Khalili, Yazan. 2020. “The Total Work of the Cultural Institution.” Makhzin 3. https://www.makhzin.org/issues/dictationship/the-total-work-of-the-cultural-institution. This debate is not so prominent yet in the Netherlands, although currently, things seem to be shifting. I hope that people will become more actively involved in fighting for the political, economic, and cultural futures they want. This goes beyond party politics: it is about nurturing grassroots political movements. Dayra and other DAOs belong to that grassroots economy. They are trying to create an infrastructure for society to express and sustain itself.

We can think of this as a form of prefiguration For more on prefiguration, see e.g., Monticelli, Lara. 2021. “On the Necessity of Prefigurative Politics.” hesis Eleven 167(11): 99-118. https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136211056992. — the activist practice of living according to the ideals of the future one fights for in the present. With Dayra, we do not know exactly where we are going but we are going somewhere away from where we are now. We are discovering the new world that will come while we are building the tools with which to resist and bury the old world. These are Gramscian times: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” Translated from Italian in Zizek, S. 2010. “A Permanent Economic Emergency.” New Left Review 64, https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii64/articles/slavoj-zizek-a-permanent-economic-emergency. At the same time, we do not want to create aggressive cuts with the past like those that modernity created — especially in the region. Not everything of the old world deserves to be buried, we need parts of it to build the future we want. Here, I am inspired by anti-colonial leader Amílcar Cabral’s book Return to the Source, which raises the question of how to bring the knowledge, tools, and ways of living of the past into the future without wanting to return to the past. Cabral, Amílcar. Return to the Source: Selected Speeches of Amícar Cabral, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973.

The question we are asking ourselves with Dayra is: how do we support trust relations in a time in which there is barely any trust left between people? DAO technology can play a role in it. The idea of Dayra is to explore how a technology that claims to be trustless can help bring back these social relations of trust. The question of trust is not only about exchange but also about how we can disagree with each other. We want to find ways to mediate disagreement within the Dayra system. To have social trust relations and communal connections also means that there should be room for disagreement and that there are ways to deal with that disagreement without having to go to the state or a court.

Recently, Dayra has been moving slowly. People’s attention is elsewhere, understandably, and we did not reach the implementation level before the war started. This is unfortunate because we need a system like Dayra badly, especially in the context of the genocide! Currently, we are slowly starting things up again and we are rethinking what Dayra could be, diving deeper into the structures through which knowledge of past practices can be shared and made accessible to communities in the future.