malaise society
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.
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
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.
Franco "Bifo" Berardi
Bifo talks about mass killings in relation to cinema, mental health, neuroplasticity, friendship, irony and, ultimately, hope.
Mark Fisher
The cultural impact of Mark Fisher's work continues to grow years after his death in 2017. His tough but always accessible dissection of the system and its endemic problems was captured in essays, posts, and books, such as Capitalist Realism, which gave rise to this conversation. The book explores the dangerous connection between neoliberalism and mental health, almost as a tragic portent of his death, although it is much more than that. In the podcast, Fisher talks about the avalanche of repercussions of the 2008 financial crash, particularly in relation to the idea of capitalism as the only possible framework.