Sarah Schulman’s book ‘Let the Record Show’ A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1983, is a stunning history of the New York branch of the legendary campaigning ‘AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power” (ACT UP). Sometimes described as the ‘mother ship’ of global AIDS activism. ACT UP pioneered uniquely… read more →

  “by the end of the twentieth century, the era of party democracy had effectively passed: although parties themselves remain they have become so disconnected from wider society and pursue a form of competition that is so lacking in meaning that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in… read more →

The Idea of an Eco-state The wretchedness of Covid has gifted one important good. It is easier to *think the unthinkable* as the unthinkable has already happened. The revelation I’m referring to is not the pandemic (that was extensively pre-mediated) but rather to the extraordinary degree of latent human agency… read more →

The Art of Assembly “ The crisis of democracy and the truth are one and the same”                                                                  William… read more →

Dr. Anthony Fauci has become something of a hero in the US. And with good reason as he may be all that stands between Trump and catastrophe in the US. But to see him standing next to Trump on the podium is to be reminded that in a former life… read more →

 At a time when right wing populist demagogues routinely denounce experts and expertise a movement of interdisciplinary artists and researchers has emerged whose work unapologetically forgegrounds factual analysis and evidence. The movement spans the generations from young artists to some who have been active for decades but the current climate has seen them crystalize into something like a movement… read more →

The War on Knowledge – Beyond the Evidence- Join me at this year’s Brighton Digital Festival for a workshop aiming at a better understanding of how trust in traditional frameworks of knowledge have been undermined and how we might approach the challenge of building an inclusive “knowledge democracy”. “The internet… read more →

Below is the abstract for my talk at Brighton Digital Festival  conference “The Messy Edge”on 28th of September in the fabulous Attenborough Centre for Contemporary Arts. – The Vanishing- Even for the privileged there is no ‘off grid’, no ‘outside’ of the ‘digital condition’. “Our every action is recordable and… read more →

This year’s Transmedialle featured a very valuable discussion between Media Theorist, Florian Cramer and writer and author of Kill all Normies Angela Nagle. Though riveting it was very long with a great many digressions. So this is just scratching the surface extracting some of the things that interested me. There… read more →

An interesting anthropological study has been recently published. The Autonomous Life: Paradoxes of Hierarchy and Authority in the Squatters Movement in Amsterdam, by urban anthropologist Nazima Kadir. Highly organised squatting had a long tradition of squatting in the Netherlands facilitated by a specific law brought in in 1971 that in… read more →