writing

This is a selection of my published and unpublished writing. My work has appeared in ArtReview, Compact, The Critic, Arts of the Working Class, as well as in edited book volumes.

  • Believe Nothing

    Believe Nothing

    Anticipating that the post-truth condition will only deepen, I have decided to believe nothing new from now on unless I’m there to see it with my own eyes. If you want me to think that the Earth isn’t flat, you’d better have a hot air balloon ready to show me the curvature of your so-called ‘oblate spheroid’.

  • How to lose a culture war

    How to lose a culture war

    In the 1960s, the German Marxist activist Rudi Dutschke proposed that the road to the revolution would involve a ‘long march through the institutions’ first. A few decades on, Dutschke got what he wanted but the revolution isn’t coming. In its place, a reactionary backlash.

  • Review: The African Desperate

    Review: The African Desperate

    In Martine Syms’s art school-insider satire ‘The African Desperate’, clichés such as ‘the work’ or dramatic jeopardy are long gone. Everybody is trying so hard to look like they’re not trying that they nearly succeed.

  • Maths Attack

    Maths Attack

    Rishi Sunak wants everyone to study Maths. Perhaps he’s a philistine. Perhaps he secretly craves cultural validation. Or maybe he just read Goethe more carefully than I did.

  • Non-Fungible Token, A Eulogy

    Non-Fungible Token, A Eulogy

    The success of the Non-Fungible Token reveals a severe ‘speculative deficit’ haunting our culture. Its passing marks the urgent need for art to break its aesthetic limits.

  • Benevolent Edgelords

    Benevolent Edgelords

    Knee-jerk accusations of fascist thought and the refusal to embrace aesthetic ambiguity have meant that that ‘the left can’t meme’. It’s all Walter Benjamin’s fault – but artist like Joshua Citarealla and Monira Al Qadiri offer alternatives.

  • Universal Basic Artist

    Universal Basic Artist

    Supporting artists to make art, or make-work for workless artists? The concept of state-provided incomes for artists may be hiding a whole bunch of consequences – unintended and otherwise.

  • The Dearth of the Clinic

    The Dearth of the Clinic

    The Monkeypox outbreak exposes the failings of the technocratic biopolitical rule and the erosion of our ability to act as moral agents that plagued the Covid pandemic.

Join my newsletter

If you’re enjoying my work, sign up for occasional updates.