Verdurin
Episodes
Paranoia: Justin Smith-Ruiu
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Questions like “What does this mean?” are central to our encounters with art. “How are these signs connected?” or “how do all symbols fit in...
Paranoia: Sam Jennings, A Long Thread
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Questions like “What does this mean?” are central to our encounters with art. “How are these signs connected?” or “how do all symbols fit in...
Paranoia: Thomas Peermohamed Lambert, Reading Between the Lines
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Questions like “What does this mean?” are central to our encounters with art. “How are these signs connected?” or “how do all symbols fit in...
Benjamin Studebaker: Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Liberal democracies don’t age gracefully. Established systems of governance like those of the UK and the US which once served as blueprints are toda...
Alfie Bown: Post-Comedy
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Not so long ago, comedy and laughter were a shared experience of relief, as Freud famously argued. At their best, ribbing, roasting, piss-taking and ...
Oliver Bennett: What We May Also Do
29 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A recording of the "What We May Also Do" written by Oliver Bennett in response to Anna Sebastian's exhibition of the same title. Staged at Verdurin in...
Robert R. Janes: Museums and Societal Collapse
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Who do you turn to at the brink of the apocalypse? What might help us to mitigate the financial, commercial, political, social, and cultural collapse ...
Vid Simoniti: Artists Remake the World
27 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Artists Remake the World puts forward an account of contemporary art’s political ambitions and potential. Surveying such innovations as evidence-dr...
Benjamin Studebaker: The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy
25 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
American democracy is in crisis. The economic system is slowly subjecting Americans of nearly all income levels and backgrounds to enormous amounts of...
Adrian Rifkin: Future Imperfect
29 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Then let the story really begin in 1968, though it has little to do with May. By chance it opens in January of that year, and it really concerns me ra...
Samuel J. Redman: The Museum
11 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On an afternoon in January 1865, a roaring fire swept through the Smithsonian Institution. Dazed soldiers and worried citizens could only watch as the...
Sharon Hecker, Raffaele Bedarida: Curating Fascism
06 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On the centenary of the fascist party's ascent to power in Italy, Curating Fascism examines the ways in which exhibitions organised after the fa...
Craig Leonard: Uncommon Sense
24 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Uncommon Sense, Craig Leonard argues for the contemporary relevance of the aesthetic theory of Herbert Marcuse, an original member of the Frankfur...
Rhea Myers: Proof of Work
28 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
NFT, BTC, DAO, ETH, WAGMI, HODL. It would have been hard to avoid these acronyms only a year ago. The hype around cryptocurrencies and blockchain art ...
David Houston Jones: Visual Culture and the Forensic
17 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Visual Culture and the Forensic bridges practices conventionally understood as forensic, such as crime scene investigation, and the broader field of a...
Toby Green, Thomas Fazi: The Covid Consensus
04 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
During the first months of the pandemic, governments worldwide agreed that ‘following the science’ with hard lockdowns and vaccine mandates was th...
Leila Jancovich, David Stevenson: Failures in Cultural Participation
15 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For the past two decades, the arts and cultural establishment in the UK has been trying to engage a broader set of audiences in their work. Countless ...
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie: Beautiful, Gruesome, and True
28 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Art has a long history of engaging with conflict and violence. From the antiquities, through Goya, to Guernica, our museums are filled with depictions...
Aaron Moulton: The Influencing Machine
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1990s, a network of twenty Soros Centres for Contemporary Art sprung up across Eastern Europe: Almaty, Belgrade, Budapest, Kiev, Ljubljana, P...
Geert Lovink: Sad by Design
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why is the internet making us so unhappy? Why is it in capital’s interests to cultivate populations that are depressed and desperate rather than dri...
Peter Rehberg: Hipster Porn
28 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s easy to forget that the cultural archetypes that pass for queerness today have historical roots. Some of these roots are mere years away from t...
Gregory Sholette: The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art
24 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Since the global financial crash of 2008, artists have become increasingly engaged in a wide range of cultural activism targeted against capitalism, p...
Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò: Against Decolonisation
17 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, o...
Nicholas Gamso: Art After Liberalism
04 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Art after Liberalism is an account of creative practice at a moment of converging political and social rifts – a moment that could be described as a...
Renzo Martens: Critique in Practice
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2008, the artist Renzo Martens released his controversial film Episode 3: Enjoy Poverty filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The film portra...
Karen Archey: After Institutions
19 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Faced with waning state support, declining revenue, and forced entrepreneurialism, museums have become a threatened public space. Simultaneously, they...
Heide Hinrichs et al - shelf documents
29 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How can a library change the world? How can an art library change the art school or the gallery? Or even an art practice? In shelf documents, artists,...
Mattin: Social Dissonance
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are not what we think we are. Our self-image as natural individuated subjects is determined behind our backs: historically by political forces, cog...
Kuba Szreder: The ABC of the Projectariat
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Labour has taken an about-turn. From Adam Smith’s proposal for specialisation which saw the factory line reorganised so that each worker needed to u...
Joshua Citarella: Politigram & the Post-left
28 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The internet’s potential to perform political miracles has been a source of both hope and disappointment for many grassroots movements. We remember ...
David Swift: The Identity Myth
22 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In conversations about polarised political issues, phrases like ‘it’s not about race, it’s about class’ have become the perfect way to induce ...
Mike Watson: The Memeing of Mark Fisher
10 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Through his blog K-Punk, Mark Fisher become one of the cult figures of cultural theory after the economic crash of 2008. One of Fisher's insights, wid...
Georgina Adam, Nizan Shaked: The problem with museums
02 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the past few years, museums of contemporary art have come under a fair deal of scrutiny. Pressures from groups such as Decoloinise This Place or th...
David Maroto: The Artist’s Novel
01 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For better or worse, artists write. But why would a visual artist write a novel? How should such a novel be experienced? How does the artist’s novel...
Abigail Susik: Surrealist Sabotage
23 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
According to the definition offered by Tate on the occasion of the exhibition Surrealism Without Borders, Surrealism “aims to revolutionise human ex...
Julian Stallabrass: Killing for Show
25 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Killing for Show Photography, War, and the Media in Vietnam and Iraq Julian Stallabrass Published by Rowman & Littlefield, 2020 ISBN 9781538...
Keller Easterling: Medium Design
09 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Medium Design Knowing How to Work on the World Keller Easterling Published by Verso, 2020 ISBN 9781788739320 How do we formulate alternative app...
Nina Power: What Do Men Want?
07 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What Do Men Want? Masculinity and Its Discontents Nina Power Published by Penguin/Allen Lane, 2022 ISBN 9780241356500 Something is definitely up...
Grant Tavinor: The Aesthetics of Virtual Reality
20 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Aesthetics of Virtual Reality Grant Tavinor Published by Routledge, 2021 ISBN 9780367619251 When philosophers have approached virtual reality, the...
Michael Newall: A Philosophy of the Art School
08 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A Philosophy of the Art School Michael Newall Published by Routledge, 2021 ISBN 9781032094342 If one were to devise a motto for the art school of toda...
Anna Watkins Fisher: The Play in the System
01 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Play in the System The Art of Parasitical Resistance Anna Watkins Fisher Published by Duke University Press, 2021 ISBN 9781478009702 What does art...
Kim Charnley: Sociopolitical Aesthetics
22 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sociopolitical Aesthetics Art, Crisis and Neoliberalism Kim Charnley Published by Bloomsbury, 2021 ISBN 9781350008748 Since the turn of the mill...
Adam Lehrer: Communions
07 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Communions Adam Lehrer Published by Hyperidean Press, 2021 ISBN 9781916376755 Artists from Kurt Cobain to Amy Winehouse command fascination not only f...
Fuller, Weizman: Investigative Aesthetics
10 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Investigative Aesthetics Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth Matthew Fuller Eyal Weizman Published by Verso, 2021 ISBN 9781788739085 ...
Alana Jelinek: Between Discipline and a Hard Place
02 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Between Discipline and a Hard Place The Value of Contemporary Art Alana Jelinek Published by Bloomsbury, 2020 ISBN 9781350100473 Some fields have an e...
Hannah Wohl: Bound by Creativity
01 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bound by Creativity How Contemporary Art is Created and Judged Hannah Wohl Published by University of Chicago Press, 2021 ISBN 9780226784694 What is c...
Patricia Bickers: The Ends of Art Criticism
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Ends of Art Criticism Patricia Bickers Published by Lund Humphries, 2021 ISBN 9781848224261 Crisis? What Crisis? At a time where there are repeate...
Frans-Willem Korsten: Art as an Interface of Law and Justice
21 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Art as an Interface of Law and Justice Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption Frans-Willem Korsten Published by Hart, 2021 ISBN 9781509944347 Art ...
Gayle Rogers: Speculation
11 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Speculation A Cultural History from Aristotle to AI Gayle Rogers Published by Columbia University Press, 2021 ISBN 9780231200219 In a world that purpo...
Caroline Seymour-Jorn: Creating Spaces of Hope
26 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Creating Spaces of Hope Young Artists And The New Imagination In Egypt Caroline Seymour-Jorn Published by The American University in Cairo Press...
Gemma Commane: Bad Girls, Dirty Bodies
04 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bad Girls, Dirty Bodies Sex, Performance and Safe Femininity Gemma Commane Published by Bloomsbury, 2021 ISBN 9781788311267 What makes a woman ‘bad’...
François Matarasso: A Restless Art
31 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A Restless Art How participation won, and why it matters François Matarasso Published by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (open access), 2019 ISB...
Jennifer Ponce de León: Another Aesthetics Is Possible
24 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Another Aesthetics Is Possible Arts of Rebellion in the Fourth World War Jennifer Ponce de León Published by Duke University Press, 2021 ISBN 9...
Anthony Downey: Research/Practice
10 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Research/Practice edited by Anthony Downey I’m good at love, I’m good at hate, it’s in between I freeze / Michael Rakowitz The General’s Stork...
Danielle Child: Working Aesthetics
13 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Working Aesthetics Danielle Child Published by Bloomsbury, 2019 ISBN 9781350022393 Working Aesthetics is the story of art and work under contempo...
Armstrong, Hughes: The Art of Experiment
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Art of Experiment Post-pandemic Knowledge Practices for 21st Century Architecture and Design Rolf Hughes Rachel Armstrong Published by Routl...
Shannan Clark: The Making of the American Creative Class
21 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Making of the American Creative Class Shannan Clark Published by Oxford University Press, 2020 ISBN 9780199731626 During the middle decades of the...
Forkert, Oliveri, Bhattacharyya, Graham: How media and conflicts make migrants
02 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How media and conflicts make migrants Kirsten Forkert Federico Oliveri Gargi Bhattacharyya Janna Graham Published by Manchester University Press, 2020...
Jonas Staal: Propaganda Art in the 21st Century
23 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Propaganda Art in the 21st Century Jonas Staal Published by MIT Press, 2019 ISBN 9780262042802 How to understand propaganda art in the post-truth era ...
Leigh Claire La Berge: Wages Against Artwork
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Wages Against Artwork Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art Leigh Claire La Berge Published by Duke University Press, 2019 ISBN 9...
Tom Holert: Knowledge Beside Itself
04 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Knowledge Beside Itself Contemporary Art’s Epistemic Politics Tom Holert Published by Sternberg Press, 2020 ISBN 9783943365979 What is the role and ...