Son[i]a #436

Kate Rich is an artist and feral economist, trading in and outside formal institutions for over thirty years. Trained in the tactical media movement of the 1990s, she was part of Bureau of Inverse Technology (B.I.T.), an international agency that anonymously redesigned guerrilla information products. In 2003, she started Feral Trade, an import-export business and economic experiment (which she sustained for two decades) using the spare carrying capacity of travellers and existing movements to transport coffee, olive oil, and other vital goods. Around the same time, she joined the Cube Microplex, a volunteer-run arts cooperative in Bristol, UK, and was part of the team that established a Community Land Trust to hold the Cube building and land in service of the arts community, in perpetuity. She also co-organised RADMIN, Britain’s first festival of Administration. Shortly afterwards she established the Feral MBA, an annual training course in business especially designed for artists and other interested parties. Kate approaches administration as an environment in which practical experiments can flourish. Its apparent greyness is fertile ground in which to cultivate radically creative ways of interacting with elements that are already embedded in our lives, such as money, contracts, and private property. 

In this podcast, we talk to Kate Rich about administration, entrepreneurship and feral vocabularies. We consider the cycles of learning and unlearning required to open up the imaginary of cooperation and business, and access their enduring emotional content. We recap experiences of shared bank accounts, economic abstractions as temporary hiding places, greyness as camouflage or cover, and acknowledge administrative practice as the inevitable soundtrack of our lives that is waiting to be reimagined. 

Sound sources:

01 Walthamstow_walker, ‘Parakeets in Springfield Park London’
02 Garuda1982, ‘Wild boar squeak field recording with tascam dr-70d & Rode NTG4+’
03 DaniloSFX, ‘Dog Growling Playing With Tennis Ball’
04 TheVeoMammoth11, ‘Wild Boar / Grunting Growling’
05 WIM, ‘frogs01’
06 kevp888, ‘LS_33978_SP_PublicGarden’
07 TRAVELcandies, ‘Howler Monkeys, Massive Voice, Costa Rica’
08 KevinSonger, ‘Crickets and Southern Leopard Frogs 9pm SMNWR Feb 2023’
09 Bruno.auzet, ‘scary fox at night’
10 TheVeoMammoth11, ‘Wild Boar / Grunting / Squealing’
11 Romancito, ‘Coyotes with night ambiance’

With the support of:

Coproduced by:

_{Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.}