Xiaoji Song
Artist and Interdisciplinary researcher
Berlin, Germany
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Xiaoji Song (she/they) is an artist, (interdisciplinary) researcher, and creative practitioner based in Berlin. Growing up in China and trained in Europe, Xiaoji works on socially relevant and community-specific experiences, often with the local networks, NGOs, and local cultural and political institutions, mediated by texts, images, games, and performances. Working in the liminal spaces of political theory, practice, and art, Xiaoji's interests include techno-politics, networked social movement, border practices, and the performative aspect of political memory.
Area of Expertise
Can web monetization protocols bring about a fairer digital future?
Our current, advertiser-supported Internet is broken. The business models underpinning data brokers, tracking, and programmatic advertising are predatory, and the tiny percentage of revenue that flows back to content creators often makes their work unsustainable. New technologies, like open payment networks that support micropayments and drip-style donations, are fostering more equitable alternatives for funding the work of individual creators and collectives. More democratic governance mechanisms and processes are able, or have the potential, to scale and support new forms of collective decision-making and digital participation. But how can early adopters ensure that these technologies are used for the public good, rather than supporting hyper-capitalist systems that have made the current digital landscape so inequitable? And what best practices can be learned from existing open source projects that operate in the public interest?
This session includes panelists from industry, civil society, and academia who will discuss the challenges and opportunities that exist in an alternatively-funded online world.
Moderator:
Ayden Férdeline, public interest technologist
Panelists:
Xiaoji Song, interdisciplinary researcher and artist
Dr Stephanie Perrin, past winner of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ‘Pioneer Award’
Ellen Magallanes, counsel, Wikimedia Foundation
Future|Money Open Studio
FUTURE|MONEY Was the first open grant opportunity for 2023. The goal was to seek artists of any discipline to reimagine outdated financial systems that currently exclude 1.7 billion people from accessing essential services to make and receive payments.
Imagining the Future is often based on our own memories and imaginations of our surroundings. We asked the artists to dive into their imagination and envision a world where financial systems were built to serve everyone, everywhere, always. Where borders aren’t barriers to supporting each other financially and emotionally.
The Future|Money space is open for the attendees of the Interledger Summit, The space is designed to convene with the artist to reflect on their practise and your own.
Artist presenting their work
Xiaoji Song: The Parallel Society is a cyber-drama that explores financial inclusion and equity by featuring the parallel fate of two characters, a Lebanese migrant in Barcelona and a villager in rural China's Henan province. The game sheds light on financial traumas, such as behavior patterns and psychological impacts as results of financial exclusions experienced by these two characters, and radically imagines a world where such barriers no longer exist, but the characters are still trapped in the old pattern.
Lena Ghaninejad: Liminal Matter is a mixed-media installation combining grains (barley), black obsidian/coltan, and 3D hologram technology. The installation aims to illustrate the evolution of money from tangible matter that originates directly from the Earth (grains, food & stones), into an increasingly immaterial entity that leaves more people behind as financial systems complexify and access to technology remains limited -thus asking the question: how can we best share the planet's resources?
Mia Wright-Ross: Loose Change (CHAINS) is a series of large-scale multi-media tapestries (primarily leather & paper lottery tickets) as a reflection/projection of the reimagination of Hope that has become a lethal tool of capitalism within the community-rich centers of Black & Brown neighborhoods throughout the United States of America.
Subhashish Panigrahi and Arky for O Foundation (OFDN) :
Bringing Down A Mountain is set in a city in India where everything and everyone is superior, including the internet. The tall mountain surrounds a rural village, stopping the internet and everything online. People from the city climb the mountain to make [Insta] reels with a backdrop of the village, where dreams are tall. residents of the latter dream of mobile data, digital payment, and relief from menial work. Does that dream ever end?
Esther Mwema and Jon Adam: Sikhula Sonke is an isiXhosa phrase which means 'we grow together.' The project seeks to amplify voices from the margins, with a focus on women in South Africa and Zambia. In recognition of the wisdom that already exists within communities but that may be little understood outside of them, our focus will be on building and documenting the living archives of village banking as a decentralized economic model.
Juan Carlos, Felipe Brugues, Ana Rodrirequez: RE/SIMULATE Economic agendas to (get rich and) stop worrying about the future Juan Carlos León Felipe Brugués Ana Rodríguez Mixed media, 3D clay printer, ceramic objects, infographic sheets, information receiver.
Carlijn Kingma, Martijn Jeroen van der Linden, Thomas Bollen: The Waterworks of money, 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.
Future|Money Open Studio Day 2
FUTURE|MONEY Was the first open grant opportunity for 2023. The goal was to seek artists of any discipline to reimagine outdated financial systems that currently exclude 1.7 billion people from accessing essential services to make and receive payments.
Imagining the Future is often based on our own memories and imaginations of our surroundings. We asked the artists to dive into their imagination and envision a world where financial systems were built to serve everyone, everywhere, always. Where borders aren’t barriers to supporting each other financially and emotionally.
The Future|Money space is open for the attendees of the Interledger Summit, The space is designed to convene with the artist to reflect on their practice and your own.
Mia Wright-Ross: Loose Change (CHAINS) is a series of large-scale multi-media tapestries (primarily leather & paper lottery tickets) as a reflection/projection of the reimagination of Hope that has become a lethal tool of capitalism within the community-rich centers of Black & Brown neighborhoods throughout the United States of America.
Xiaoji Song: The Parallel Society is a cyber-drama that explores financial inclusion and equity by featuring the parallel fate of two characters, a Lebanese migrant in Barcelona and a villager in rural China's Henan province. The game sheds light on financial traumas, such as behavior patterns and psychological impacts as results of financial exclusions experienced by these two characters, and radically imagines a world where such barriers no longer exist, but the characters are still trapped in the old pattern.
Lena Ghaninejad: Liminal Matter is a mixed-media installation combining grains (barley), black obsidian, and 3D hologram technology. The installation aims to illustrate the evolution of money from tangible matter that originates directly from the Earth (grains, food & stones), into an increasingly immaterial entity that leaves more people behind as financial systems complexify and access to technology remains limited -thus asking the question: how can we best share the planet's resources?
Subhashish Panigrahi and Arky for O Foundation (OFDN) :
Bringing Down A Mountain is set in a city in India where everything and everyone is superior, including the internet. The tall mountain surrounds a rural village, stopping the internet and everything online. People from the city climb the mountain to make [Insta] reels with a backdrop of the village, where dreams are tall. residents of the latter dream of mobile data, digital payment, and relief from menial work. Does that dream ever end?
Esther Mwema and Jon Adam: Sikhula Sonke is an isiXhosa phrase which means 'we grow together.' The project seeks to amplify voices from the margins, with a focus on women in South Africa and Zambia. In recognition of the wisdom that already exists within communities but that may be little understood outside of them, our focus will be on building and documenting the living archives of village banking as a decentralized economic model.
Juan Carlos, Felipe Brugues, Ana Rodrirequez: RE/SIMULATE Economic agendas to (get rich and) stop worrying about the future Juan Carlos León Felipe Brugués Ana Rodríguez Mixed media, 3D clay printer, ceramic objects, infographic sheets, information receiver.
Carlijn Kingma, Martijn Jeroen van der Linden, Thomas Bollen: The Waterworks of money, 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.
Strategizing for Financial Inclusion: Advancing Digital Financial Rights for Refugees, Asylum Seeker
Refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants often face significant barriers to accessing digital financial services involuntarily, despite affordable and accessible digital financial services being crucial for their economic integration and empowerment.
What strategies can be leveraged to advance financial inclusion for underrepresented communities like these? Which coalitions should be built, what kind of technologies are needed, and what movements should be connected to?
This panel features diverse experts: Daphnee Prates Iglesias, policy advisor at UN-IGF, currently leading a working group on digital access, and previously Financial Inclusion Policy Officer at International Rescue Committee; Tomás Leighton, the Executive Director at Rumbo Colectivo, a think tank associated with the Chilean party Democratic Revolution, leading research and policy work on care policies, social rights, environmetal justice, and new development model; and Sarah Habib, a FinTech Strategies from London that has worked with several FinTech Startups that focuses on supporting refugees. They will offer perspectives from their past work and provide a potential blueprint for advancing digital financial rights for refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants.
Payment Parity Perspectives: Women of Color Reshaping Financial Inclusion
The session will feature perspectives from three women of color from diverse sociocultural backgrounds on their situated knowledge related to problems, impacts, and potential solutions to financial inclusion and equity. The panelists have a longstanding background of working with the ILP community and will comment on best practices and open payment standards to enable seamless interoperability between different financial institutions, platforms, and technologies. Thus resulting in greater accessibility and affordability of financial services as both a driver and a gauge of gender equality.
Moderator:
---Raashi Saxena – Strategy Consultant & Trainer, Accessibility Lab
Speakers:
---Victoria Coker – Founder of Black Web Fest
---Xiaoji Song – Interdisciplinary Artist, Researcher and Entrepreneur
--- Julaire Hall -Julaire is a highly accomplished project and program management professional with 10+ years of extensive experience in planning, executing, and overseeing the successful delivery of programs in government and the global services sector. She’s previously worked for Jamaica’s investment and promotions agency and the private sector-led industry outsourcing association.As Programs Outreach Manager for the Interledger Foundation, Julaire will help build the programmatic aspects of the Foundation.
Xiaoji Song
Artist and Interdisciplinary researcher
Berlin, Germany
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