This project explores the assembly of a global, open-source database on the economic activities and tax contributions of multinational corporations. In particular it examines how prototyping may serve as a speculative method to not only gather information from diverse sources, but also to engage with organisations, groups and communities who are concerned or affected by this issue, to materialise the problem of corporate tax avoidance and to suggest other ways of organising economic life.
The project is undertaken together with the Open Data for Tax Justice (#OD4TJ) network and builds on the What Do They Pay? report. If you’re interested in contributing or finding out more, you can get in touch on this address.
As part of this project we created an “Atlas of Offshore FDI” exploring financial relations between states through the flows of money from foreign direct investment (FDI). Its specificity is the effort to visualize the combinations and modifications of the flows of money for making sense of transnational economic activity as well as visual practices for representing uncertainty. While public data practices often emphasise and value the production of certainty , this project considers what data projects may learn from diverse cultures for visually representing, managing and articulating uncertainty.
It is a research project done in collaboration with the Tax Justice Network, a network of researchers and research centres, and the Public Data Lab. The experimental visual model is designed and developed by DensityDesign Research Lab.
For further details see:
- Mauri, M, Briones, Á, Gray, J., Haberly, D & Anderson, C 2021, Visualizing Offshore Foreign Direct Investments: The Atlas of Offshore. in Design Culture(s) Cumulus Conference Proceedings Roma 2021. pp. 1127-1143.
- “Fog of Finance? Visualising Offshore and the Aesthetics of Uncertainty” at MoneyLab #6: Infrastructures of Money, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam (NL) and the Cooperative Research Centre “Media of Cooperation”, Siegen (DE). [video] [abstract]
