Student loan debt has more than doubled in the last decade, eclipsing every other kind of consumer debt in the United States.  With almost 8 million student loan borrowers in default, it is fair to speculate that this crisis could be the next housing bubble.  And while hedge fund managers speculate over the collapse of the student loan market, students and families are crushed under the burdens of their debt  and the mind-numbingly complicated options their government offers for repayment.

Vicky Virgin’s three-part video series of lecture demonstrations, Fine Print, probes the absurdity of student loan agreements through precise choreography, carefully chosen locations and the  indecipherable language of loan contracts themselves.  She exploits the arbitrary calculus used to measure a student’s innate worthiness of assistance;  the result is a sly primer on the systemic toxicity of “hardship.”  Please join us for a screening of each of the three parts of these lecture demonstrations ( total run time: 15 minutes).

Created for the artist collective, BFAMFAPhD, working in the intersection of art, technology, and political economy.