What if history actually did end with the fall of communism and the end of the cold war, as Fukuyama claimed, and we are now enjoying some kind paradise of liberal democracy with no better political framework to strive towards? Or, what if a recognition of exploitation and social inequities actually is leading to a massive workers’ revolution that will reclaim the means of production and lead to a more equal distribution of resources and power—whether Marxist, democratic, or otherwise? Indeed, we are unsure whether we are still inside of an idea of progressive social emancipation and human self-realization that defined the modern era, ...

Writer and researcher Sam Moore speaks about his new book, with Alex Roberts, THE RISE of ECOFASCISM: CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE FAR RIGHT (Polity, 2022), which finds, in the dissolution of pre-millennial frameworks for climate, capital, and governance, conditions that are ripe for the re-emergence of fascist formulations of power. We talk to Sam about the interface between humans and the natural world; the return of trad values; and strategies for climate change mitigation that short-circuit the instrumentalization of nature as a tool for capitalist expansion and/or a race-based ordering of the world. Sam is also a co-host of the ...

This book explores how cultural practitioners and institutions perceive their role in the post-truth era, by repositioning their work in relation to the notion of the “public”. The book addresses the multiple challenges posed for artists, curators and cultural activists by the conditions of post-factuality: Do cultural institutions have the practical means and the ethical authority to fight against the proliferation of “alternative facts” in politics, as well as within all aspects of our lives? What narratives of dissent are cultural practitioners developing, and how do they choose to communicate them? Could new media technologies still be considered as instruments ...

Prologue When I first proposed curating this exhibition on the subject of paranoia, it was September 2016, a little over a month before the United States presidential election. Donald Trump couldn’t possibly win, and we were about to see the momentous election of our first woman President. I had long been interested in paranoia—as an affliction, a strategy, and an ontological system. I took it seriously, very seriously, but it also felt like something outside of me, a symptom of something kept at a distance. Both during the campaign and in its aftermath, things began to swing out of control. Incidents like ...

Caleb Cain discusses radical pipelines, counter-messaging, game theory and political factions.

The internet has broken our brains. This report answers why. We feel exhausted, confused, even frightened by changes in our world. But if one thing is certain, it’s that the genie’s out of the bottle and it’s not going back in. Therefore, we face a choice. Accept reality will only get weirder and we will only get more confused. Or develop a new model for how the post-social media world works. To forecast the future, we have to analyze the present at a higher resolution. Gonzo Culture is the inaugural issue of 8Ball, a Los Angeles-based trend consultancy founded by Sean ...

In Yannic Joray’s solo exhibition, Crackpot Realism, sculpture and drawing are used to examine the subversive powers of institutions, science, and technology in historical accounts of post-war mind control operations. Through tactics like withholding, bombarding, or diverting the viewer, the artist adopts strategic moves that subtly gesture how easy it is to manipulate a willing audience. Crackpot Realism is on view through May 27, 2022 at Galerie Bernhard.

Ideology is the word that Marxists use to name divergences between cognition and reality that are more systematic than contingent error. The term has other meanings (most notably as a synonym for “worldview,” “set of beliefs,” or “political orientation”), but since it is the broadly Marxist or Marxian understanding of ideology that is at stake here, it seems right to linger with it and try to figure out how, or if, this concept might be relevant to the interpretation of artifacts such as paintings and sculptures. The possibility that cognition and reality may diverge implies that, potentially at least, they ...

The 2nd issue of the Sorry Report is a panoramic view on epidemic ignorance that shapes our lives in the information age. Cases studies include EU Skepticism, Smoking, Speed Limit Controversy in Germany, Gun Control in the US, Populism. Brexit, Climate Change, Racism, Vaccination, Alternative Facts, and Love. Remember Karl Popper — “True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.” Sorry.

Nearly a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, RICHARD BECK, author of “We Believe the Children: a Moral Panic in the 1980s “(Public Affairs, 2015) and a senior writer at N+1, spoke to New Models about social contagion—from the wild, child abuse allegations of Q and the satanic panics of recent history to the witch trials and blood libels of times before. Deepening the conversation is Richard’s current work on the War on Terror and its remaking of the American worldview.

The 2016 US elections marked the rise of Internet trolls, such as Milo Yiannopoulos, and inflammatory news websites, such as Breitbart, in what could be described as a pivotal moment in the era of “post representation.” But these events are merely indicative of a discourse which spans beyond American politics and has so far led artists, thinkers and activists to wonder: How is knowledge redefined when information and entertainment are rendered indistinguishable? Furthermore, could the same malicious strategies used by the far right be appreciated and even re-appropriated as a possible discourse of empowerment? The following is a think piece ...

In 1990 a laboratory in Charlotte, North Carolina discovered that Perrier water contained traces of benzene. Although it was later proved that the naturally occurring traces had not been filtered out due to a human error, the company never recovered its credibility in the United States. The size and scope of the hysteria surrounding the discovery caused some people to wonder who organized the analysis of the Perrier in the first place. Who told the press? Guillaume Dasquié, author of a book on the subject of secret corporate practices, claimed that between 1980 and 1989 the growth of Perrier threatened ...