Debt
Text by Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas

Repaying is a duty, but lending is an option?

         A man may surely claim his dues:
         But, when there’s money to be lent,
         A man must be allowed to choose
         Such times as are convenient![1] 

Such is a passage from Lewis Carroll’s poem, ‘Peter and Paul’—a lengthy, rhymed narrative about two characters who are bound together through debt. This loaded term and broad concept can be examined from various perspectives, including its emotional, social, historical, and economic dimensions.

What is debt, in its most elementary sense?
A promise of repayment. The concepts of promise and value are at the heart of the creditor-debtor relationship. Friedrich Nietzsche describes it as ‘the oldest and most personal relationship there is’—a relationship in which ‘person met person for the first time, and measured himself person against person’.[2] According to him, the vital task of a community or society has been to produce individuals capable of making promises—those who can stand as guarantors for themselves within the creditor-debtor dynamic, capable of honouring their debts. This entails constructing a memory for the individual, one that secures the ability to keep promises. Such a memory involves the production of a conscience. It is, therefore, within the realm of debt obligations, Nietzsche argues, that subjectivity begins to take shape.

Debt is closely linked to temporality: one who keeps a promise assumes the role of being answerable for their future—a future that is always unpredictable, no matter how near or distant. If debt points to the absent (the what is not), it simultaneously holds potentiality (the what could be): the insufficiency inherent in the lack carries within it an active potential, unfolding through both possibilities and impossibilities. It was exactly such potentialities that interested me when selecting the artists and their works for the exhibition.

What is debt?
A ‘perversion of a promise’, according to David Graeber.[3] Contemporary society is shaped by promises—of security, community, and care—and it is often governed by economic contracts, historical injustices, and societal expectations. The economic aspect of debt—financial debt—is an inescapable, daily reality for many working under the precarious conditions of the art world: those living from one honorarium and commission to the next, barely staying above zero. Who, then, is privileged enough to be able to operate as part of a system that is so classist?

With declining wages and pensions largely deferred until later in life, access to credit and personal investment portfolios have been proposed as a tool, a form of investment in the self, which can compensate for changing social and economic conditions. The right to (higher) education, housing, forms of social protection, and social services has been redefined as a privilege that is conditional on the acceptance of credit and private insurance. Debt, therefore, operates as a mechanism intrinsically linked to control and discipline—it organizes social life and intensifies mechanisms of exploitation and domination between the owners (of capital) and the non-owners (of capital). Additionally, deficit spending forms the foundation of all modern nation states.[4]

Debt is such a charged word, since it is situated in the field of morality, between one’s responsibilities, obligations, and feelings of guilt. Both obligation and guilt, as ‘the common condition of those who feel they are in debt’, can, according to Nietzsche, be traced back to the very materialistic idea of debt itself.[5] It is the German word Schuld that captures this duality, encompassing both meanings: the moral concept of Schuld (guilt) originates from the tangible notion of Schulden (debts).

As the curator of the members’ exhibition, I encountered a clear asymmetry between myself and the nearly three hundred artists who applied to the open call.[6]
Symbolically, debt represents any form of imbalance.
To what extent, then, can it be argued that the concept of debt is the essence of it all?

Ontological debt entails a fundamental indebtedness inherent in the very nature of human existence (we owe and are owed simultaneously); it is incurred by the very act of being born into the world. Here, our existence is not self-sufficient but shaped and sustained by various—familial, social, cultural, and ecological—reciprocal relationships. Debt is, therefore, also about recognizing the contributions of past generations and the interdependencies with those yet to come.
Between the fragility and persistence of the (power) structures that bind us together, the exhibition responds to the topic of debt in its material—largely sculptural, using a variety of materials and approaches—written and spoken forms. Performative readings, as part of the opening event and on another evening over the course of the exhibition, are an integral part of the show’s narrative.

Artists: Gleb Amankulov, Benjamin Hirte, David L. Johnson, Tammy Langhinrichs, Artur Schernthaner-Lourdesamy, Miriam Stoney, Magdalena Stückler, Frank Wasser

Curator: Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas

With the generous support of Tectus Risk Management, Thaddaeus Ropac Galllery Salzburg and the Slovenian Cultural Information Centre Vienna.

Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas (she/her, b. Slovenia) is an art historian, independent curator and writer. From 2019 to 2023, she was director of the ULAY Foundation, where she was responsible for various (curatorial) projects related to issues of the artist’s legacy. A selection of her recent curatorial projects includes exhibitions at SOPHIE TAPPEINER (Vienna, 2024), Gregor Podnar (Vienna, 2024), Schauraum MuseumsQuartier Wien (Vienna, 2023/2024), Sector Gallery 1 (Bucharest, 2023), Eva Kahan Foundation (Vienna, 2023), HOW Art Museum (Shanghai, 2022/2023), Georg Kargl Fine Arts as part of the Curated by Festival (Vienna, 2022) and Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2020/2021). Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas is a contributor to Artforum and her writing has been published in Frieze and ArtReview. She recently held a visiting professorship at die Angewandte, University of Applied Arts Vienna. She lives and works in Vienna.

Footnotes:
[1] The poem, ‘Peter and Paul,’ in chapter 11of Lewis Carroll’s novel Sylvie and Bruno (1889), contrasts a whimsical fairy tale with serious social commentary. Characters engage in discussions about religion, philosophy, and morality within the context of Victorian Britain. The book can be accessed via Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/620/pg620-images.html
[2] Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 45.
[3] David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (New York: Melville House, 2011), 391.
[4] Through public debt—the amount of money governments owe to external (foreign governments or international financial institutions) or domestic creditors—entire societies become indebted. In Austria, the discussion about managing public debt and financial instability is a major topic of concern. In October 2024, the newspaper Der Standard reported, under the title ‘Excessive Debt: How Will Europe Punish Us if We Flout the Rules?’, about the fact that ‘Austria’s incoming government will have to consolidate between two and three billion euros a year in order to meet the requirements of the EU debt pact. Those who break the rules must pay the penalty. But there are also loopholes.‘ András Szigetvari, ‘Zu hohe Schulden: Wie straft uns Europa, wenn wir auf die Regeln pfeifen?’, Der Standard, October 17, 2024. Translation by author.
[5] Elettra Stimilli, The Debt of the Living: Ascesis and Capitalism (New York: State University of New York Press, 2017), 138; see also Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, 161.
[6] Although I had been part of juries before, I had never been the sole person involved in the selection process for an open call with so many applicants. A significant number of artists responded to my open call textual prompt, in which I invited a brief response (maximum 150 words, in English or German) to the following question: “How does the meaning of debt—on a personal or societal level—relate to your work?” The artists provided meaningful, intimate reflections that gave me much to contemplate and that also somehow framed the show. My lengthy selection process was a privileged experience, albeit it one accompanied by feelings of responsibility and guilt—knowing I could have curated thirty very different exhibitions in response to the topic. I hope—and, to an extent, feel obliged—that future collaborations will emerge from this experience, especially with the artists I was unable to work with on this occasion. The artists who applied invested their time and resources into their applications, yet were not selected, leaving them in a state of both debt and being owed. To what extent do I owe them?