I'm happy that Verdurin has been invited to stage the 9/11 Watch Party in Bournemouth, at the first-ever Adam Party Curtis Conference. On the 25th anniversary of the event itself. The whole conference looks suitably insane. buff.ly/YsYtWSS

"The East is Red" last night at Verdurin. With Lee Jones. Part of Nitrate Film selected by Kit Ramsay.

One advantage of my hypothetical NHS-issued wife might be that she wouldn’t let me do media with hair like that. I spoke to Samuel Andreyev about CuLtuRe (again). buff.ly/iK88FHH

New course: Psychoanalysis for the Fourth Industrial Revolution with Helen Rollins 📅 21 September - 2 November, 7-9pm 🙋 4 sessions, in person at Verdurin 🎟️ £100/concessions 🔗 buff.ly/w9wQ81k How can we make sense of our changing self as the boundaries between the physical and the social blur?

Peak art world.

So many artists, so little good art. 🎧 I spoke to Samuel Andreyev about the collapse of the contemporary paradigm in artistic production, the dearth of critical culture, the overproduction of aesthetic mediocrity, and the elusive reconciliation of popular and high culture.

Pierre d'Alancaisez: The Crisis in Contemporary Art

Pierre d’Alancaisez is a critic, curator, and researcher working with the multiple politics of the arts. His writing has appeared in outlets such as The Critic, ArtReview, The Spectator, and Compact.…

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Tuesday at Verdurin: The East is Red with Lee Jones buff.ly/wkovwKx

A special SUMMER DISCOUNT on online courses ICONOCLASM Image struggle 🎬 A 4-session video-lecture course with Nina Power 🎟️ £55 + 10% off with code HEATWAVE26 🔗 buff.ly/fD0Qrbw

Some recent arrivals at the store, with Felix McNamara, Kelby Losack, and David Roden. buff.ly/jgsH8Pf

Tuesday at Verdurin: Nitrate Film: The East is Red with Lee Jones 📅 4 August, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/yTgQRZy The East is Red is an industrial revolution in cultural production. Its scale and all-hands-on-deck success both impress and terrify even sixty years on.

Saving pictures of execution chambers to my phone *for research*. Death symposium, organised with Rose Lyddon, coming up at Verdurin on 3 October.

A nice post-Pride write-up of "Inversion", by Colin O'Brien. buff.ly/v47uAG2

A special SUMMER DISCOUNT on online courses ZEITGEIST A philosophy of history course 🎬 A 4-session video-lecture course with Nina Power 🎟️ £55 + 10% off with code HEATWAVE26 🔗 buff.ly/Caby7Gv

Next Tuesday at Verdurin: Nitrate Film: The East is Red with Lee Jones 📅 4 August, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/yTgQRZy The East is Red, a song-and-dance epic charting the history of the Chinese Communist Party from inception to the founding of the People’s Republic, laid the ground for the Cultural Revolution.

On doormats today and on news stands soon, the summer issue of The Critic, with my scorn for Ai WeiWei and everyone — including you, dear reader — complicit in promoting his conformist brand of dissidence and protest.

Apropos nothing, a reminder that there is a book with essays about homosexuality and Berlin, homosexuality and liberalism, and homosexuality and the clash of civilisations. buff.ly/x2Mtks6

Oliver Bennett’s excellent notes on Olivier’s Henry V delivered at Verdurin’s Nitrate Film in early July. buff.ly/LqFM1Ch

Now online: DISCERNMENT Taste, Attention, Literacy What we decide to turn our attention to is no small matter. How do we make sense of making sense, differentiate, and judge? How we can develop our powers for the cultural apocalypse? 🎬 A 4-part video-lecture course 🔗 verdur.in/course/disce...

Coming up at Verdurin: Nitrate Film: The East is Red with Lee Jones 📅 4 August, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/yTgQRZy

Very excited to announce that Verdurin will publish The Hermitage by Quentin S. Crisp on 1 December. The Hermitage by Quentin S. Crisp A novella on vocation, inheritance, and loss buff.ly/zibxfMo

notes and notices: Zyad Menk: Scar Tissue at Ginny on Frederick ★★☆☆☆ Piling up tonnes of junk in the corner of a gallery is an old trick. This showroom is tiny, its corners everywhere, and Menk’s collection of electronic circuit boards.. Read on: buff.ly/07q0jw0

Typing with the caps lock on counts as physical labour, right?

Jenny Holzer@jennyholzer.bsky.social · 2w ago

PEOPLE WHO DON'T WORK WITH THEIR HANDS ARE PARASITES

notes and notices: Yvonne Mabs Francis: Breakdown at Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix ★★☆☆☆ Does an artist get to participate in the construction of her outsider status? Francis’s oils, sent up to London by her Oxfordshire estate just in time to coincide with Tate’s Kahlo “mania”.. Read on: buff.ly/dVDfZRD

When you run out of liberal truisms to capitalise.

Jenny Holzer@jennyholzer.bsky.social · 3w ago

ABSOLUTE SUBMISSION CAN BE A FORM OF FREEDOM

15k people on YouTube have now watched me flick my hair as I talk at John Gillam about CuLtUrE. Why?! buff.ly/MeDh7z2

The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its Gravediggers

Pierre d'Alancaisez helped build the cult of contemporary art as a gallerist, a critic, and eventually one of its more useful ideologists but then the pandemic broke the spell. Pierre saw the…

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🎧 What went wrong with Britain's cultural state and would it take to change it? Just some of the easy questions John Gillam asked me on his Thinking Class podcast this week. - Apple: buff.ly/LKAECmT - Spotify: buff.ly/QRNcYCf - Substack: buff.ly/o4obhY5

My friend Kit Rasay's The Final Film Festival looks excellent. 45 films, 6-9 August. Come! (Kit also programmes Nitrate Film at Verdurin.) buff.ly/h9e0aAM

Are you stuck in the queue for a hip replacement? Have you thought of visiting your local museum? Art's instrumental integration into healthcare is a joke that refuses to go away. These people won't stop until every wall is covered in some twee mural. buff.ly/9WCUJgC

notes and notices: Marc-Aurèle Debut: ON REPEAT at Glasshouse ★★★☆☆ Are gays okay? The question’s rhetorical, of course. Debut’s installation chases orgiastic exuberance to stave off the realisation that the carnival is long over. A pile of used men’s underwear... Read on: buff.ly/ayJkK4y