A mattress, conceived as a place to crash, together. A hot tub, imagined as a site to encounter the end of the world. In times of networked connectivity what’s perhaps more radical than embracing virtuality is to think about the stakes of the body, community, and personal encounter. These are themes engaged by the work of performance artist Cindy Baker, whose projects speculate on the forms of intimacy and interaction that art is capable of generating. In Baker’s words, her art uses the medium of “context” in order to explore questions of community engagement and social inquiry. Brought together by ...

We are back with Pan Dajing. We talk her work (that we love!), about solitude, crypticism, intimate “connection at a distance” and many other digressions into the emotional core of our “spiritual fluid.”

Flight Simulator is an ode to airplane mode. It celebrates the best part of air travel: peaceful solitude. Choose a destination, enable airplane mode, and enjoy.

It’s funny because here we are talking about listening and four out of six people around me are wearing headphones, curating their own sound environment and blocking out others. Those parties where everyone dances and listens to the same music on wireless headphones is the closest to being “in it,” together. Plus, none of the neighbors call the cops. • Empathy is a term that appears in theories of the psychology of art, according to which visual art can make the general public experience emotions. Following this school of thought, art appreciation is not a matter of reason but of feeling. This ...

Feminist Pedagogies Working Group The work group was triggered by the desire to articulate and create space for a queer and feminist perspective on learning and teaching inside and outside of the art academy. It builds on and responds to the Critical Practices: Education from Arts and Artists Conference at Valand Academy (October 2015) and the Meaning Making Meaning exhibition at A-venue (March 2016) in Gothenburg. All students and staff at Valand Academy were invited to join this open work group. Over the past year we held lunchtime meetings, dinners at homes, met in bars or over skype, in our studios and ...

Esposito points out, “for life to remain as such, it must submit itself to an alien force that, if not entirely hostile, at least inhibits its development” (Esposito 2011: 8) In this essay I will explore the ambivalent position of the alien within the context of one of the themes for this workshop: “Intimacy with the Cosmos”, in order to reflect upon the question of whether there is a place for a non-body politic? The theme invites reflection on scales beyond the grasp of the human – the micro and the macro and the proliferation thereof considered not as a fixed ...

Medium Rotation presents conversations and sonic experiences that probe the conditions (and counter the received ideas) of our time, among other times. Each season of the podcast is animated by the concerns of an issue of the magazine, which are addressed by artists, writers, and scholars. The first season, Omniaudience, asks how we understand ourselves and others through listening—and what the obstacles to listening reveal about our society. Omniaudience also testifies to the power we exercise as listeners to act in concert with each other, and to amplify voices that might not otherwise be heard.

“Today, if you wanted to pioneer a New World, where would you go?” An artist and entrepreneur envisions a world after the pandemic in which citizenship is untethered from borders, and networks replace nations. A fairy tale and a series of video polemics.

I hope I can be forgiven for looking behind you into your house. I’m curious, of course, in a regular voyeuristic way, because, since March, I haven’t been able to come over and look around in person, glancing into empty rooms on my slow walk to your bathroom. But this kind of nosiness never delivers much, and here too, it is something else that urges me to collect these pictures while we sit in front of our webcams trying our best to carry on despite being unable to be in rooms together. Screen-grabbing: taking a picture of a picture, and ...

Dearest you, How have you been these past months? I feel like the pressures of the world—at all scales, personal, collective, structural—have kept me quiet. Hibernating amidst the summer’s burn, trying to conserve energy. But it’s time, now, to awake again, just in time for harvest. To stand up from my screen, take in a deep breath, feel the oxygen expand within me and return out again to mingle with others. Today, I’ll share some thoughts that have been gathering on how design, itself a tool for transforming the world, might look inward in order to transform itself…

When we talk (or sing karaoke!) together in an online room, we may experience a lag—yet we probably perceive the exchange as relatively synchronous. When you respond to the texts of an author, writing years or decades or centuries before you, it’s also a conversation—but with greater apparent asynchronicity. In this framework, it’s all a kind of thinking together. Whether I release ideas into a room or commit them to pixels or paper, it represents one round of a long- form exchange—with folks who are nearer or further into some possible future than my present position….

Initiated by Prem Krishnamurthy in March 2020 to counteract isolation and support new forms of community, Present! is a live, collaborative, online event series that brings together artists, designers, curators, writers, musicians and other creative folks. This experimental format combines a virtual lecture, talkshow, and Sunday sermon with embodied activities (group karaoke, meditation, dance, movement therapy), alongside readings, screenings, performances, and discussion groups. Based in Berlin, Present! prototypes a diverse, participatory, and hybrid platform for sharing emergent tools and experiences across borders.