Ideas

19th March 2020

Paris, Capital of the 19th Century
Walter Benjamin

The introduction to Benjamin’s Arcades Project, was written in 1938 but not published until long after his death. It is an attempt to categorically reveal how, through the apparent chaos and convulsions in 19th century Parisian culture and society, great explorations and exposés of the realities of the epoch and its ramifications for later generations, are afforded us by examination of the lives and works of its inhabitants.
27th February 2020

Parallel State: Lines of sight beyond the territory
by Simon Poulter

Until one month ago, British people were among the few lucky individuals on this planet that could count themselves to not only one, but even two citizenships. Facing a deterioration of the positive powers that are granted to UK-citizens, it begs the question of who has really benefitted from taking away these ‘bonus rights’. Would it be possible to reinstate this safety-net by connecting mobile and transitory points of resistance to connect to a new form of citizen-power? Meet the emerging Parallel State. Simon Poulter gives a recap of the day on which the ambitions of the Parallel State were drawn out and reviews the territory it was inescapably born into.
20th February 2020

Aesthetics, Technological Politics and the Video Age
by Ravi Sundaram

In an age of surveillance capitalism is it no longer viable to put hope in the creative possibilities Walter Benjamin believed were opened to humanity through technological advances in media? –Or can a new poetics of infrastructure disrupt the sinister operations of corporate power? Ravi Sundaram surveys the will in the media.
13th February 2020

Confessions of a Thug: Pakiveli

The hybridiser needs history as a pantry of costumes, wrote Nietzsche, that hymnographer of the Will. What is artist Hardeep Pandhal cooking up for us at The Tramway?
31st January 2020

Does the estate have its own will? Dwelling upon the last will.
by Agnieszka Kilian

In a world proliferating in riches and injustice there seems, for the moment anyhow, little relief in the notion of generations. For Nietzsche the contract was a ‘memory of the will’, but there are other modes of control of future distribution of goods. The question here, for Agnieszka Kilian, with the last will, is who or what bequeaths, and what actually is the bequest?
4th December 2019

Take the High Road: Scott Hames’ Literary Politics of Scottish Devolution by Colin Kidd

Colin Kidd muses on relations (if any) between the near unanimity of the literary world and the actually existing historical world in his review of Scott Hames’s new book The Literary Politics […]
27th November 2019

Merely conventional signs. ‘Dreams&Dramas. Law as Literature’ by Katarzyna Maniak

Dreams and Dramas :Law as Literature is the book to accompany the 2017 exhibition published by NGBK edited by Agnieszka Kilian in collaboration with Joerg Franzbecker and Jaro Varga. It examines […]
21st November 2019

The Drouth was at TRAINING FOR THE FUTURE

What is a 'Training Camp' organised for and by artists and activists? What would ‘Training for the Future’ mean at an International Arts and Music Festival? The Drouth was at ‘Training for the Future’ at the Ruhr Triennale.
25th October 2019

‘The sense of helplessness is more of a choice than a reality, in my opinion’ – James Kelman in dialogue with Noam Chomsky

James Kelman: As in the UK there are many people in the United States who are ashamed and outraged by the actions of their government; some repudiate these actions, try to work against them. There is a wider sense of helplessness...