As many of us are currently confined at home in many places of the world, and while we keep in our minds and in our hearts those who have no choice but to be at risk from the ongoing worldwide pandemic, because they’re doctors, nurses, cashiers, workers, homeless, incarcerated, or in any other precarious situation, we wanted to provide you with a daily podcast to use this time to reflect and organizing without talking about the pandemic itself — there might be already enough about it. The concept is very simple. Every day, we ask one person the same question: “what ...

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.

Northampton, MA One afternoon in May 2021, amidst rising temperatures and vaccination rates, I went to Child’s Park with my wav recorder. That week, I was feeling stuck and unsure of what to do with my free time and creative projects. I chose the park because it was a place where activity concentrated, which I had noticed during my frequent visits there that spring. Individual people and groups posted up on the grass at sufficient distances from each other to afford some sense of safety, comfort, and privacy, values which everyone’s body language and choice of grassy spot seemed to assert. ...

How is contagion designed? How do labour, migration, habits and data configure contagion? Analyzing the current conjuncture through these vectors, this book critically addresses issues of rising unemployment, restricted movement, increasing governance of populations through data systems and the compulsory redesign of habits. Design logics underscore both biological contagion and political technologies. Contagion is redesigning how labour and migration are differentially governed, experienced and indeed produced. Habits generate modes of exposure and protection from contagion and become a resource for managing biological and social life. Data turns contagion into models that make a virus actionable and calculable. New modes of ...

This document in front of you is the result of a conversation over lunch, which took place in the early days of Corona in Berlin. Back then, we were simply wondering: in a time in which people are, either by policy or good faith, forced to restrict their spatial radius of interaction to a bare minimum, how do we actually deal with food? Not only in the sense of what we choose to eat conceptually, but how we choose it, literally. Where do we get it, how do we prepare it, and what does something essential like food mean to ...

Artists JOSHUA CITARELLA & RACHEL ROSSIN join NM for a freestyle audit of the 2022 art ecosystem. We discuss how the economy of cultural production, both on-platform and off, is evolving post peak-lockdown.

As the novel coronavirus pandemic spreads, we—the people of planet earth—are faced with a dizzying variety of responses: quarantine, containment, vigilant self-quarantine, paranoid self-isolation, and in some cases escape from the above. Suddenly, it is as if circulation itself has turned against us, making healthy freedom of movement in the world a dealer of death. So your flight is cancelled. Your trip is over. We are staying in place for the foreseeable future. Exhibitions, symposia, gatherings of all kinds are postponed. But not sporting events. Those will go on, but without any supporters in the stands. The players will play ...

Viruses have lurked on the margins of cultural theory ever since Deleuze and Guattari suggested that “our viruses make us form a rhizome with other creatures.” According to Patricia Clough and Jasbir Puar, in the age of the internet, virality became “a form of communication and transmission across various domains: the biological, the cultural, the financial, the political, the linguistic, the technical, and computational.” In recent years, however, viral theory in the humanities and social sciences hasn’t kept pace with the scientific initiatives starting to peek into the virosphere’s vast unknown realms. This special issue of e-flux journal seeks to ...

Reality has gotten strange. Throughout the summers of 2020 and 2021 we would like to invite you to join us at the poolside in Tropez for a series of readings and poolside chats with writers, poets and artists. Literature has the means to help us escape, reimagine the world anew, or offer bold new ways to engage with the world. It’s empathy building. It’s also fun. Between weekly live readings and interactions with the Tropez live webcam, BDP and Tropez are excited to announce Empathy When, Tropez Writing Podcast! We will be recording our invited guests and producing a weekly ...

Franco Berardi Bifo discusses his book The Third Unconscious and the state of the contemporary psychosphere.

(excerpt; 02:13:00 – 02:15:00, of 02:49:27)

This summer we invite you to join us at the poolside in Tropez for a series of readings and poolside chats with writers, poets and artists. Literature has the means to help us escape, reimagine the world anew, or offer bold new ways to engage with the world. It’s empathy building. It’s also fun. Between weekly live readings and interactions with the Tropez live webcam, BDP and Tropez are excited to announce Empathy When, Tropez Writing Podcast! We will be recording our invited guests and producing a weekly podcast for you to enjoy, socially distanced storytelling!