Perverting the Power Vertical (PPV) Launches PiraMMMida.life

Michał Murawski, in collaboration with David Roberts (Bartlett School of Architecture), Masha Mileeva (Courtauld Institute) and Denis Maksimov (Avenir Institute), introduces PiraMMMida.life.

PiraMMMida features the work of over 20 contributors: scholars, artists, architects, practitioners and others. SSEES contributors include Philippa Hetherington, Peter Zusi and Alena Ledeneva. The first batch of contributions will be published on PiraMMMida.life on Wednesday 1 July; while the remaining contributions will continue to drop, like money from the MMM tree, in weekly batches until the end of the month. A virtual PiraMMMida conference will take place on 1 September, with the Call for Contributions to be circulated in due course.

PiraMMMida.life - the cyber version of the PPV show at the (cancelled) Venice Biennale of Architecture 2020 - is a transmedia, transdisciplinary project exploring the relationship between finance, architecture, art and power. PiraMMMida borrows its name from MMM Bank, a notorious post-Soviet pyramid scheme launched by Sergei Mavrodi in 1991 and persisting in various guises (as MMM Global) until today. PiraMMMida explores Ponzi schemes, such as Mavrodi’s, and other “fake horizontals”: pharaonic edifices of exploitation and fraud masquerading as paragons of grassrootist virtue.

PiraMMMida.life is a project of PPV (Perverting the Power Vertical: Politics and Aesthetics in the Global East). It is supported by the Bartlett Architectural Research Fund, the FRINGE Centre for the Study of Social and Cultural Complexity and the UCL European Institute, carried out in collaboration with SaLE Docks and the Avenir Institute.

Join the mailing list on the PiraMMMida website to be sent the streaming link on Wednesday 1 July, for the launch event!