This title will be available soon. Group Material’s work was primarily topical and temporal, fueled by our personal and collective observations—and by the social urgencies we perceived. Our horizon was the present tense. In 1989, the curator of the MATRIX Gallery at the Berkeley University Art Museum, Larry Rinder, invited us to address the subject of AIDS after seeing our exhibition at Dia Art Foundation the year before, “AIDS & Democracy: A Case Study.” At the time, Group Material consisted of Doug Ashford, Julie Ault, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Karen Ramspacher. By 1989, we had witnessed several years of the epidemic with severely ...

In contrast to current ‘roadmaps’ to recovery, this report rejects the notion that “the economy” should be the object of Coronavirus response, and that the project is one of recovery, resilience, or return. Instead, we argue that the task at hand is nothing short of reconstructing society through two great transformations. First, we must make it possible to both respond swiftly to all emerging pandemics with all of the resources at our disposal. Second, we must enable society to shift seamlessly in and out of periods of social distancing with policies that promote social solidarity and economic security for all.

Mattin and Miguel Prado talk to noise scholars Cecile Malaspina and Inigo Wilkins about the collective need of counter-bunker techniques, noise in view of Carnap’s theory of probability and ‘whack’ swans. Special guest Dali De Saint Paul provides vocals and readings for our house beats and noise.

In early 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world and states of emergency were declared by one country after another, the global technology sector—already equipped with unprecedented wealth, power, and influence—mobilised to seize the opportunity. This collection is an account of what happened next and captures the emergent conflicts and responses around the world. The essays provide a global perspective on the implications of these developments for justice: they make it possible to compare how the intersection of state and corporate power—and the way that power is targeted and exercised—confronts, and invites resistance from, civil society in countries worldwide. This ...

“Today one may complain that life has been reduced to points in a matrix of relations—cities, territories, and historical narratives prematurely refined into categories of known and unknown, real and virtual, concrete and abstract space.” At the time, we could not have imagined the mass migration into abstract space that would soon follow. Today, living through the planetary pandemic, the imperative to navigate the world and our own lives through computational tools has been radicalized to the extreme. The last months of Skyping, Zoom conferencing, and collaborative Google Docs writing make us feel we have no choice but to exhaust ...

In this issue, Alessandra Franetovich and Trevor Paglen discuss Orbital Reflector, Paglen’s reflective sculpture launched into low-earth orbit as a satellite. Housed in a small box-like structure, the lightweight reflective material of the sculpture was meant to deploy and self-inflate like a balloon and reflect sunlight towards earth, making it visible to our eyes as a nearby artificial star. Unfortunately, at the critical moment of the sculpture’s release in 2018, the US government was on shutdown, with all agencies held hostage in order to force Congress to fund Trump’s gigantic border wall between the US and Mexico. There was no ...

The first episode of Promise No Promises! Feminism Under Corona is a continuation of a conversation with artist Ran Zhang about the effects and consequences of Covid-19 in a reality that is also mutating despite the confinement of our bodies being locked at home. “The first conversation I had about Covid-19 with the artist Ran Zhang took place in Paris at the end of January 2020, on the occasion of her exhibition Resolution of Traits at the independent art space L’ahah. The virus that had caused a new disease, first in Wuhan and China, was now appearing in France and by ...

The title of the third episode Radical Sociability from the Feminism Under Corona series refers to a recent lecture by artist, curator, writer and radio producer Lou Drago in which they were unfolding the complexity of the relationship between identity politics and the current and growing division of the Left. As a way of overcoming the divisive effects of identitarianism, they propose “to enact an intersectional affinity-based politics.” In order to avoid the dynamics of the current “cancel culture,” so present and constant in social networks, Lou Drago’s proposal is based on calling-in rather than calling-out. This conversation between Lou ...

This episode is based on a conversation with Ana Garzón Sabogal, who lives and works in Colombia. In her practice she is operating with the close encounter between art, collaborative learning, activism, and free culture, and is member of Más Arte Más Acción, together with Alejandra Rojas Giraldo. Their practice includes a feminism which stems from the critical conscience and from the understanding of feminist practices as depending on the material conditions of each context, of each community and of each person. The same applies to the political question of language, because of the enormous need to learn, to know, ...

The second episode entitled The Monogamy of the System is a continous exchange with author and activist Brigitte Vasallo about the consequences and instrumentalization of the pandemic by governments, corporations and people in power. In order to shake up some common considerations about love and monogamy, this conversation aims to expand their meaning beyond the commonplace and romantic ideas which seem to be even more predominant in the current situation of personal and political isolations.

Miguel Prado, Mattin and Reza Negarestani continue the conversation in this unprecedented moments demarcated by COVID–19: Wire-guided torpedoes, conspiracy theories, the great plague London, the human sloth with an endnote from Gottfried Ben. New paradigmatic times sonified and musicalised by Mattin and Miguel Prado.

In this special pandemic quarantine ep, I talk to graphic designer, art director, overall fascinating creative thinker and friend Mike Tully. We get into a few of his works and how type design can act as a form of film critique and how distribution effects the reading of an artwork. We also briefly relate this to the recent, botched, Jordan Wolfson takedown by Dana Goodyear in the New Yorker and how an artworks funding and circulation can or cannot be read as integral to the understanding of the piece. This all somehow relates to the response (or lack thereof) to ...

For this episode, Sky Goodden spoke with art writer and musician Johanna Fateman, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, a contributing editor at Artforum, and a frequent critic for 4Columns.org. Fateman co-owns the historic Seagull Salon in New York City, and is, as Lauren notes, “riot grrrl queer royalty” for her involvement in bands like Le Tigre. As Fateman spoke from New York, the epicenter of the pandemic, there were ambulances blazing in the background; her son was home from school, her partner was recovering from the COVID virus, her salon was holding on by a thread, and through ...

For episode 21, Sky Goodden spoke with Coco Fusco, the legendary Cuban-American critic, artist, educator, and art historian. Speaking from the center of a pandemic, and on the brink of a significant wave of civil unrest and anti-racist protest, Fusco circled themes relevant to each crisis, looping them through the lens of Cuban history and the seismic shifts it is currently undergoing, in relation to protest, artistic freedom, and criticism against the government.

Writer and theorist NORA KHAN speaks with New Models about how institutional power reifies itself online, COVID aesthetics, and the labor pressures of distance working/socializing/learning via platforms such as Zoom. Nora is the author, most recently, of Seeing, Naming, Knowing (Brooklyn Rail Press, 2019) on mass surveillance and ‘machine visual culture.’

We are joined by UC Davis professor of literature and critical theory, JOSHUA CLOVER, who is also a communist and the author of several books including RIOT STRIKE RIOT: THE NEW ERA OF UPRISINGS (Verso, 2016). This conversation begins with the street protests that have erupted across the US in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many other black Americans at the hands of the police. It then expands to encompass digital platforms, definitions of violence and property, the promise of communes, and the caveats of UBI, giving a trans-historical view of revolutionary resistance at the ...

So we’re all social distancing. We’re all wondering whats next. We’re trying to figure out if we are breaking up with America or if America has slowly been breaking up with us. So in lieu of a guest—which is kinda hard when everyone is under quarantine—I’m posting a mix I made in December of 2012. Comprised mostly of low viewcount covers of Taylor Swift tracks, the mix is part torch song, part elegy, post Occupy, pre Sanders and reflects how I was feeling at the time. In listening back now it feels a bit prescient and certainly apt. “Thank You ...

It’s not over til it’s over! Your favourite car crash of a podcast returns one last time for a sunny Sunday afternoon with a special solar-powered remote broadcast from End of the World Garden, with a UK Garage set from DJK Huysmans, phone-ins from across the globe and finally, a CoronaQuest victory!

Second episode of an experimental virtual lecture, talk show, and Sunday sermon, with a dose of group karaoke thrown in! Using Prem Krishnamurthy’s P!DF, v.6.0.0 as a score, this episode expands on the idea of ‘bumpiness’ as a form of productive friction and ventures into the realm of speculative fiction. It features a number of special guests including Amale Andraos & Dan Wood, Anthony Marcellini, Bala Krishnamurthy, Connie Samaras, Emily Smith, Jonny Bruce, Marcos Lutyens, and Susan Ploetz, as well as surprise guest Shumon Basar. ——

This syllabus is the result of the Twitter conversations that took place during three launch events for Radical Care: Embracing Feminist Finance, a zine published by Amateur Cities and the Insitute of Network Cultures. The publication ponders how to embrace alternative values in economies, for example focusing on locality, cooperation, and caring. During the launch events, we asked contributors, respondents, and readers questions on topics related to feminist finance such as patriarchy, care and infrastructure. A wave of valuable information, relevant links, references and questions ensued. We realized that we did not want this wealth of collective knowledge to get ...

Brian Lim was a student in my third year communication design class at SVA before—or perhaps while—he became the cult Singaporean R&B icon Slodown. Even back then he had chops, and for our semester long conceptual branding project he developed a full world around a notional high-low porn site called Bodies. So, it’s not surprising that as a performer his work barely even pauses at songwriting and recording. If you look carefully at the liner notes of his releases or the end credits of his videos, aside from a few one-off collaborations with people like Tzekin from Eternal Dragonz, Brian, ...

Part one of interview with Reza Negarestani.

“The more lonesome the isolation, the easier the pitch.” An essay on the exchange of faces for interfaces, suits for sweats, presence for liveness, and freedom for safety; a note on Two Ears and One Mouth. With artworks by Graham Anderson. (This essay is also available as an audio recording.)

CENTRE PARRHÈSIA LITERATURE SOCIÉTÉ DES AMIS DE LA PARRHÈSIA SOCIÉTÉ DES AMIES DU VIRUS

Mattin & Miguel Prado thinking aloud about the current events regarding COVID-19 while making sense of history as it happens. They let the unconscious improvise in this absolutely unexpected present, trying to render actual a no longer distant future.