@theretheirtheyreshow @ba.design.gold
18-22 JUNE 2026
Unit 8, 133 Copeland Rd, London, SE15 3SN
Unit 8, 133 Copeland Rd, London, SE15 3SN
Listed: The Emotional Market
Ziyue Gu
Listed: The Emotional Market is a speculative design project presented through animation.
Set in 2050, the project imagines a world where emotional trading has become part of everyday public infrastructure. A person enters the Emotional Market in a slightly unstable emotional state. Their private and unclear feelings are identified, classified, priced and listed, until emotion becomes a kind of public resource.
The project starts from the contradiction between emotion and value. Emotion is personal, unstable and hard to measure, while value suggests something calculable, useful and exchangeable. By using the logic of the stock market, the animation asks what might be lost when feelings are treated like assets.
This future is an exaggerated version of the present, shaped by emotional value, platform comfort and emotional consumption. The work asks whether feelings always have to be useful, and whether we can still accept emotions that are messy, negative or difficult.
Set in 2050, the project imagines a world where emotional trading has become part of everyday public infrastructure. A person enters the Emotional Market in a slightly unstable emotional state. Their private and unclear feelings are identified, classified, priced and listed, until emotion becomes a kind of public resource.
The project starts from the contradiction between emotion and value. Emotion is personal, unstable and hard to measure, while value suggests something calculable, useful and exchangeable. By using the logic of the stock market, the animation asks what might be lost when feelings are treated like assets.
This future is an exaggerated version of the present, shaped by emotional value, platform comfort and emotional consumption. The work asks whether feelings always have to be useful, and whether we can still accept emotions that are messy, negative or difficult.
Emotional Value
Emotional Market
Speculative Design
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