What is a derivative? Why does it matter to art or the humanities? NYU Professor of Art and Public Policy and Director of the Graduate Program in Arts Politics, Randy Martin, will speak about the relationship between financial derivatives and forms of debt in the production and circulation of art. This event is organized in conjunction with the exhibition To Have and To Owe.

Randy Martin is professor of art and public policy and director of the graduate program in arts politics at New York University. He is the author of Financialization of Daily Life; On Your Marx: Relinking Socialism and the Left; the Financial Logic of Risk Management; Performance as Political Act: The Embodied Self; and Critical Moves: Dance Studies in Theory and Politics; among other titles. He has edited collections on U.S. Communism, academic labor and, recently, Artistic Citizenship: A Public Voice for the Arts (with Mary Schmidt Campbell).

Martin holds degrees in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the City University of New York. He has studied, taught, and performed in dance, theater, and clowning in the United States and abroad. Previously, he served as professor and chair of social science at Pratt Institute, associate dean of faculty at Tisch School of the Arts, and as an editor of the journal Social Text.