Son[i]a #148
Mark Fisher
Mark Fisher was a British writer, teacher, and cultural theorist whose legacy, after his death in 2017, remains one of the pillars of contemporary theory. His work, published in books, hundreds of essays, and a multitude of posts in his personal blog, K-Punk, has had a tremendous influence in many spheres, from art to music, by way of activism.
With an incisive, accessible style and an approach often rooted in pop culture but based on a constant, insightful analyisis of the neoliberal system, Fisher’s work combined resistance, counterculture, dystopian melancholy, and Marxism, giving rise to a solid discourse in which art and politics irrevocably intersect.
In 2009, Fisher published his first book, Capitalist Realism, in which he explored the general sense of capitalism, which is often put forward as the only viable political and economic system, and the only logical solution. In the book, Fisher examined the role of the media, the education system, the connection between neoliberalism and mental health, and that which he called “business ontology”, in a world where “internment camps and franchise coffee bars co-exist.”
This podcast is the result of a conversation with Mark Fisher on crisis, insurrection, and the dangerous idea of capitalism as the only conceivable container.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with video artist, activist and researcher Marina Gržinić, which we were unable to include the first time around. Marina reflects on her trajectory, together with Aina Šmid, in the field of video art and new media, from the eighties to the present day, from a feminist and socialist perspective.
Luke Fowler
Luke Fowler talks about music, computers, and instruments, about infrasound, ultrasound, and thresholds of the listenable, about archives and obsessions, about affect as a film editing criteria, and about the enormous complexity involved in representing a person’s life. We also talk about the forces that make some artists disappear from the cultural canon altogether in spite of having created fascinating, ground-breaking work.
Céline Gillain
Belgian artist and musician Céline Gillain split her time between working as a high school art teacher and the solitary practice of painting in her Brussels studio, until one day she had enough and organised a residency for six female artists at her grandmother’s house. Five years of collective experimentation with other women paved the way for the creation of hybrid, solo performances combining artistic research, the staging of her speculative writing, and catchy pop songs, carefully woven through complex and seemingly sooth and seamless narratives. We talk with Céline about her incursion into the music industry, stage fright, the power of fragility and depression as a form of resistance today. Paradoxically, her current media of choice are a mix of pop songs, motivational speeches, and updated fictions from the entertainment world, which run through everyday life in a darkly humorous, inimitable way.
Marina Gržinić
Marina Gržinić talks about amnesia, aphasia, and seizure, about biopower and necropolitics, about borders and volumes, corpus and corpses, about deathscapes, intestines, and holograms, and about the disturbing miniaturisation of affect and empathy, as a process that runs parallel to technological acceleration.
María Ruido
María Ruido talks about the political power of images and the subversive potential of cinematic strategies such as off-screen, voice over, and editing, which help us understand and imagine the world in new ways. She also reflects on the always contradictory relations between the critical and experimental power of culture on one hand, and its institutionalisation on the other
Franco Berardi
Interview with the writer, philosopher and political and cultural activist Franco Berardi on citizen resistance in the face of the crisis that currently hangs over Europe and possible strategies for insurrection.