A culture war is underway in Europe – not between the ‘anywheres’ and the ‘nowheres’, but between those who use culture to divide – by class, by race, by nation – and those who use it to connect and include. This war is not based in Parliament – but on the street, in our homes, […]
Art and Culture
To documenta 14: This is how democrats deal with controversy – not by bringing out the censors!
The news that “documenta 14 Cancels ‘Auschwitz on the Beach’ Performance Amid Intense Criticism” should worry us all. Censorship is the coward’s way out of controversy. Dialogue, fierce disagreement and, hopefully eventual synthesis, is the hard road that democrats dare to tread. Back in early July Franco Bifo Berardi wrote an open letter, addressed to myself and […]
On Documenta 14, Athens – in conversation with iLiana Fokianaki, Art Agenda
“We Come Bearing Gifts”—iLiana Fokianaki and Yanis Varoufakis on Documenta 14 Athens Created in 1955 by artist and curator Arnold Bode, Documenta sought to advance the cultural reconstruction of Germany within the postwar European order. Reoccurring every five years, it has since unfolded into a periodic forum for contemporary art. When Adam Szymczyk was appointed artistic director […]
Poetry in prose? Letter in the FT
AUGUST 20, 2016 - From Vijay Kumar. Sir, One often hears that people on the left of the political spectrum tend to be more intelligent, more articulate, better read and generally more fun to be with. Sir, One often hears that people on the left of the political spectrum tend to be more intelligent, more [...]
The FT’s summer Q&A
The FT’s silly season Q&A edition had some questions for several of us. Here are my answers: How are you spending the summer?
"Artists should be feared by the powerful" – complete pdf transcript of my Keynote at the Moscow Biennale, October 2015
The complete pdf of the Keynote with which I closed the 6th Moscow Biennale on 1st October 2015 is now available:. Click here (And for an audio file, click here)
Artists should be feared by the powerful – Keynote closing the 6th Moscow Biennale, 1st October 2015 (audio)
Click above for an audio of my Moscow talk – which RT-tv was broadcasting live until I began to criticise the Putin government…
Of Loss and Retrieval – latest and last article in WdW Review
Photo of an unknown boy, which we can imagine to have been Kostas, who went missing in 1992 during the evacuation of ethnic Greek refugees from Smyrna. Image courtesy of Red Cross Archive, Greece. This is my eighth and, for the time being, final article for Witte de With Review (an initiative of Rotterdam-based Witte de With Center for Contemporary […]
MODERN MONEY: AESTHETICS AFTER THE GOLD STANDARD (video), UC Berkeley, 7th Nov. 2014
Click the image above to watch a 60′ keynote on Money, and its Aesthetics, after the Gold Standard, following by a presentation by Danae Stratou of her remarkable installation ‘It’s Time to Open the Black Boxes’ – click here for a full description (and pictures and video) of that work.
MODERN MONEY: AESTHETICS AFTER THE GOLD STANDARD, UC Berkeley, Friday 7th November 2014
An Academic Conference, sponsored by the Department of History of Art, University of California, Berkeley, November 6–7, 2014 Featured Speaker: Yanis Varoufakis Featured Artist: Danae Stratou Contact sferguson at usf.edu and jordanrose at berkeley.edu for more information. (The image is Andy Warhol’s 200 One Dollar Bills, 1962)
Sleepless in Europe – in Huffington Post
Some weeks ago I heard Arianna Huffington deliver a talk, in Austin, on sleep deprivation and the terrible decisions that it leads to. This made me recall that all the awful decisions of our European leaders (and there were so many of them) were reached at around 4.00am. I mentioned that to Arianna and she […]
Easter wishes to all
Who said that Easter has no significance in our cynical age, even to atheists like myself? Suffering, the sacrifice of the innocents, persecution of prophets of truth – it is all going on with a vengeance. On this note, Happy Easter to all. (The photo above was taken by Danae Stratou on the US-Mexican border […]
Reaching For Our Revolvers: How a United Europe defused its culture and divided its people
This is an article that appeared in Brooklyn Rail, a NYC-based art magazine. My brief was to write a piece on the effects of European unification on European culture. Click here for the BR website version. Or…