What does the democratization of image production really accomplish beyond opening channels of communication? Ironically, the liberation of the voice as a means of announcing oneself and one’s views can be seen as a way of absorbing the brunt of more pressing questions concerning the distribution of actual material resources, as an escape from the pursuit of more equitable relationships with regard not just to representation, but also to the distribution of property and knowledge—the power to determine one’s own circumstances. At stake is really a way of liberating the means to decide one’s own way of living, of being ...

Things would be much simpler if there existed a consistent means of evaluating art’s capacity to provide a concrete value for people. It’s a problem to which capital provides the most immediate solution—beyond the mundane routine of the art market, Brandeis University’s (ongoing) attempt to close their Rose Art Museum and liquidate its entire collection stands as a particularly unfortunate example of how a priceless collection of art, given the right circumstances (total financial meltdown), still finds its price. One is also reminded of the tragic decision by Middlesex University to close its renowned philosophy department in order to cut ...

When Paul Chan and Sven Lütticken proposed to gather a series of “reports” on the (mostly) recent rise of right-wing, populist movements for e-flux journal, it was immediately apparent that the urgency and complexity of the topic required its own special issue. As protests erupt throughout Europe in opposition to austerity measures being pushed through by right-wing governments and EU fiscal bodies, we are also now witnessing a phenomenon spreading throughout the Northern Hemisphere in which some of the most brazen hardline racist rhetoric emerges not only from politicians, but from the general populace as well. What is going on? ...

Americans against capitalism? Arab nations toppling autocrats through peaceful protests? 2011 has been a year of massive popular uprisings—on a completely unexpected scale and from populations that were thought to have been thoroughly subdued. Commentators have predicted that discontent in the Arab world would soon come to a head for so many years that it was beginning to seem unlikely, just as others had begun to dismiss the political potency of popular demonstrations in fiscalized Western democracies. For those who started to think that large-scale, radical optimism was naïve or nostalgic, the events of the past year should be sufficient ...

A feisty conversation between Paul Chan and Martha Rosler on different strategies and positions of art making in relation to social and political engagement, as well as discussions on boredom, bodily suffering, Bertolt Brecht, Chris Marker, and The Passion of The Christ.

“The book itself has its genesis in the Crisis/Media Workshop that was jointly organized in Delhi by Sarai-CSDS, Delhi and the Waag Society, Amsterdam, a year ago in March 2003. The concept, outlined in the workshop publication by Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Geert Lovink, was a response to 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan, the violence in Gujarat and the Kargil war. Over 3 days, participants from many different parts of South Asia and the world gathered to debate and dissect the relationship between the notion of crisis and the media, exactly one year after Gujarat had gone up in flames, and ...

“Weep no more, citizens; they breathe, these celebrated men for whom we cry; our patriotism reanimates them” Presented in honor of Marat and Le Pelletier, “Citizen Sade” wrote this memorial address at the height of violence during the French Revolution, just after the start of the Reign of Terror. The text, effusive and cloyingly patriotic, brings to question the Sade’s own political position – a provocative impulse all the more remarkable given the addresses audience: the gathered Section des Piques, amongst the most hardline Jacobin districts of Paris. Though frequently cited and made infamous as the inspiration for Peter Weiss’ influential ...

This font eulogizes the passing of Agnes Martin (1912–2004), painter, mystic, writer. “I suggest to artists that you take every opportunity of being alone.” and “I paint to myself. It comes from outside. I don’t believe in that inner stuff. You sit and wait.” She once said. This title was included in Library Stack as part of the collection Open Font License, by Bryce Wilner.

It is often said that we no longer have an addressee for our political demands. But that’s not true. We have each other. What we can no longer get from the state, the party, the union, the boss, we ask for from one another. And we provide. Let’s see how need and care and desire and admiration have been cross-examined, called as witness, put on parole, made the subject of caring inquiry by e-flux journal authors since 2009.