Politics

2nd January 2021

Feminism and Film: A Dialogue
by Núria Araüna Baro and David Archibald

An epistolary transliteration of a performative dialogue on the possibility of building a non-fiction cinema for the memory of women (as political subjects) – and the role of male academics in that process. Originally presented at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Catalunya by Núria Araüna Baro and David Archibald.
23rd December 2020

Feminist City :
City of Possibility
Andrea Gibbons

'Our public spaces are not designed for female bodies', runs the blurb on on Leslie Kerns' book feminist city published by Verso. Writer and housing activist Andrea Gibbons takes a critical read, and ponders on why our cities are still made for and by 'mostly men', and what are the possibilities for other, better cities for all sorts of bodies and beyond the already charted pathways...
16th December 2020

Australian War Crimes : The Importance of Holding Oneself to Account 75 years after Nuremberg by Shannon Maree Torrens

The Brereton Report, commonly named so after the leader of investigations, NSW Supreme Court Judge Paul Brereton, was published in November 2020, seventy-five years after the Nuremberg Trials began. The Report found evidence of war crimes committed by the Australian Defence Force troops in Afghanistan between 2009-13. Shannon Maree Torrens discusses the situation in Australia. In an age where 'sovereignty' is much discussed (and much superficially in Brexit) this piece shows us something of where the life and death issues of the question really lie.
9th November 2020

Spitfire Britain and the Zombie Union by Scott Hames

Can the kingdom still be united if there’s no unionism in the union? And was ‘Unionism’ simply the most charming and esoteric of checks and balances on the ‘union’? It may all seem abstruse now, but Scott Hames sees us hurtling through an absurdly persistent pragmaticism towards a constitutional car crash.
27th September 2020

Come Into the Open:
Taking a Breather on the other side of Lockdown
by Neil Cooper

Artists have been adapting their practice to COVID-19 restrictions. In the open, is the Common Guild’s off-site response to the ongoing situation. Six artists have created new audio works designed to be listened to outdoors on headphones during government-sanctioned daily walks. Neil Cooper responds.
21st August 2020

A Monumental Servitude: reflections on the objects of the capitalist city
by Hussein Mitha

Abolish restaurants, statues, bars, mirrors and painting -the lot? The bourgeois desire to be served is inescapable in our urban contexts which consolidated in the 19th century city - the ideological hothouse of capitalist modernity. Hussein Mitha reflects on the glut of materials crowding the urban consumer.
14th August 2020

The Hollow Victory over Losers
by Johnny Rodger

Walter Benjamin's work is said to have much influence over contemporary thought. What has been the quality of that influence? And what could he possibly have to say about current winners and losers? Johnny Rodger looks at Benjamin in the context of some more recent work by Ahmed, Butler, Preciado and others.
11th July 2020

The Power of Ten:
A New Turn(er) of Events
by Neil Cooper

For the second year in a row The Turner Prize takes a lurch towards acknowledgment of the collective. Is this democracy in action? Is it a definitive change? Should we rejoice? Or is the change dictated merely by temporary circumstances? Neil Cooper looks at the history and some contemporary realities.
9th July 2020

Imagination in the Contemporary Society of the Spectacle by Jacob Lund

We are currently witnessing some fundamental changes in the conditions and the status of images: More and more images are networked; cameras and screens (portable or fixed) are everywhere; image data is geotagged; databases can be navigated in real-time; the prevalence of the phenomena of operative images and "machine vision" detached from human control and sense-perception rapidly increases, etc.