I hold ardent solidarity with all who commit crimes and all who have dreams. I seek affinity with those who want to work as little as possible; with those who can't work. My boyfriend used to wear a leather jacket with these words painted on: *IF WE ALL SPIT AT ONCE THEY WILL DROWN*. It was a bastardization of a quote from Bob Crow, RMT Union general secretary, in England: "If we all spit together we can drown the bastards." It's a delicious image, deluging those who want us unorganized, underpaid, exploited with our own saliva. (Sophia Giovannitti. Working Girl. On Selling Art and selling Sex)
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Spectatorship is a form of camaraderie and a form of betrayal
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They wanted their differences from each other: Dog wanted Bird to be a hopeless insurrectionist so that he could feel his own secret fidelity to sudden transformation still alive under layers of pragmatism and policy; Bird wanted Dog to believe in incremental progress in the abattoir of capitalism so that her inner sense of abyss could acquire walls and a floor. Bird searched in Dog for ground, and Dog searched in Bird for the lightness of fire. Their difference was binding and animated their love, which was sometimes exhausting and mundane, with the five-fingered chords of world history. (Hannah Black. Tuesday or September or The End)
For Bird, hungry for and uncertain of others, it was medicinal and magical. Every day she saw a hundred new signs that no world was too good to be destroyed and renewed by the people it was made up of. Every day she saw a thousand new signs that a world that thought itself too good to be destroyed and renewed was bound to death and the secularization of death.
The riots made the world new, and sadness is always old, so in that brand new summer, in the liquid return of feeling, Bird forgot to dwell on her losses. The losses themselves were healed by the novelty of being with others, and not only that, but seeing police cars burn, and not only that. Her soul rushed toward the riot. She had no opinion about her fate. The wheel of fortune spun wildly; the future was infinitely open. (Hannah Black. Tuesday or September or The End)
The riots made the world new, and sadness is always old, so in that brand new summer, in the liquid return of feeling, Bird forgot to dwell on her losses. The losses themselves were healed by the novelty of being with others, and not only that, but seeing police cars burn, and not only that. Her soul rushed toward the riot. She had no opinion about her fate. The wheel of fortune spun wildly; the future was infinitely open. (Hannah Black. Tuesday or September or The End)
"Using a methodology they refer to as grafting – both as in working hard and as in fusing organic material – this year’s Matter of Art curators combined their curatorial research to assemble a biennale which considered how the experiences of peasant farmers and urban workers of the past are relevant now. Together they presented a series of exhibitions which addressed historic and contemporary ideas about labour and the land and explored ways to bridge rural and urban divides and create solidarity between workers’ groups. As the pair finished introducing the biennale and its accompanying public programme, they shared two research questions to which they had frequently returned while planning the exhibitions: Who are the peasants? Who are the workers?" Jackson Mount on Matter of Art Biennale for Tank Magazine
https://tank.tv/magazine/issue-101/features/prague
https://tank.tv/magazine/issue-101/features/prague
Ocean Vuong, Because It’s Summer
you ride your bike to the park bruised
with 9pm the maples draped with plastic bags
shredded from days the cornfield
freshly razed & you've lied
about where you're going you're supposed
to be out with a woman you can't find
a name for but he's waiting
in the baseball field behind the dugout
flecked with newports torn condoms
he's waiting with sticky palms & mint
on his breath a cheap haircut
& his sister's levis
stench of piss rising from wet grass
it's june after all & you're young
until september he looks different
from his picture but it doesn't matter
because you kissed your mother
on the cheek before coming
this far because the fly's dark slit is enough
to speak through the zipper a thin scream
where you plant your mouth
to hear the sound of birds
hitting water snap of elastic
waistbands four hands quickening
into dozens: a swarm of want you wear
like a bridal veil but you don't
deserve it: the boy
& his loneliness the boy who finds you
beautiful only because you're not
a mirror because you don't have
enough faces to abandon you've come
this far to be no one & it's june
until morning you're young until a pop song
plays in a dead kid's room water spilling in
from every corner of summer & you want
to tell him it's okay that the night is also a grave
we climb out of but he's already fixing
his collar the cornfield a cruelty steaming
with manure you smear your neck with
lipstick you dress with shaky hands
you say thank you thank you thank you
because you haven't learned the purpose
of forgive me because that's what you say
when a stranger steps out of summer
& offers you another hour to live.
you ride your bike to the park bruised
with 9pm the maples draped with plastic bags
shredded from days the cornfield
freshly razed & you've lied
about where you're going you're supposed
to be out with a woman you can't find
a name for but he's waiting
in the baseball field behind the dugout
flecked with newports torn condoms
he's waiting with sticky palms & mint
on his breath a cheap haircut
& his sister's levis
stench of piss rising from wet grass
it's june after all & you're young
until september he looks different
from his picture but it doesn't matter
because you kissed your mother
on the cheek before coming
this far because the fly's dark slit is enough
to speak through the zipper a thin scream
where you plant your mouth
to hear the sound of birds
hitting water snap of elastic
waistbands four hands quickening
into dozens: a swarm of want you wear
like a bridal veil but you don't
deserve it: the boy
& his loneliness the boy who finds you
beautiful only because you're not
a mirror because you don't have
enough faces to abandon you've come
this far to be no one & it's june
until morning you're young until a pop song
plays in a dead kid's room water spilling in
from every corner of summer & you want
to tell him it's okay that the night is also a grave
we climb out of but he's already fixing
his collar the cornfield a cruelty steaming
with manure you smear your neck with
lipstick you dress with shaky hands
you say thank you thank you thank you
because you haven't learned the purpose
of forgive me because that's what you say
when a stranger steps out of summer
& offers you another hour to live.
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Historical Materialism Conference, London
6-9 November 2025
Insurgent Universality and Rev- olutionary Dynamics: Com- moners, Anti-Politics, and Fem- inist Strikes
General Stream
BBK-MAL-253 (Birkbeck Malet Street)
• Gabriel Klimont-Jaroszuk, Michał Pospiszyl, Insurgent Universality in Warsaw, 1794: Commoners’ Autonomy and the “Fear of the Masses”
• Vincent Angerer, From Rupture to Re- absorption: The Limits of Anti-Politics in the 2024–2025 Serbian Mass Movement
• Olia Sosnvoskaya, Exhaustion, Interrup- tion and Rethinking Revolutionary Time through the 2020-21 Uprising in Belarus
Friday 7th, 09:30-11:15
6-9 November 2025
Insurgent Universality and Rev- olutionary Dynamics: Com- moners, Anti-Politics, and Fem- inist Strikes
General Stream
BBK-MAL-253 (Birkbeck Malet Street)
• Gabriel Klimont-Jaroszuk, Michał Pospiszyl, Insurgent Universality in Warsaw, 1794: Commoners’ Autonomy and the “Fear of the Masses”
• Vincent Angerer, From Rupture to Re- absorption: The Limits of Anti-Politics in the 2024–2025 Serbian Mass Movement
• Olia Sosnvoskaya, Exhaustion, Interrup- tion and Rethinking Revolutionary Time through the 2020-21 Uprising in Belarus
Friday 7th, 09:30-11:15
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