The new issue of Media Theory (9.2) is now available.

It’s a standard issue featuring articles by Siobhan Watters, Ma Sirui, Sonya Petersson, Katarina Mäkinen, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup & Jannie Møller Hartley, and Anthony Kelly.

The issue also includes commentaries by David Beer and N. Katherine Hayles, and a special section on ‘Charles W. Mills and Media Theory’, edited by Simon Dawes and Anamik Saha, with articles by Shirley Anne Tate, Azsaneé Truss, André Brock, Linsey McGoey, and Surya Parekh.

The full issue is available open access here:

https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/issue/view/53

#media #theory

Been writing about what’s happening to #universities for years:

https://manifold.umn.edu/read/the-uberfication-of-the-university/section/dfa328f4-ab07-439e-8625-bf74a7f30f85

But the process really seems to be picking up speed now:

https://gothamist.com/news/the-new-school-faces-identity-crisis-amid-planned-layoffs-reorganization

‘“They are trying to radically diminish the power and capacity of the #liberal arts divisions, both graduate and undergraduate,” said Rachel Sherman, sociology professor at The New School's Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts. “It does seem to be designed to minimize the power of the divisions that have historically been more politically motivated.”’

‘History professor Jeremy Varon, who is president of The New School’s AAUP chapter, called the cuts “an ideological attempt to decimate historic spaces of critical inquiry and Social Justice".'

#highered #politics #humanities #ArtsandHumanities #arts #SocialJustice

Looking forward to celebrating the launch of this new book tonight at Gazelli Art House:

Gaberbocchus Common Room, by Jasia Reichardt.

'The Common Room, started by Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, was active 1957–1959, in the basement below the Gaberbocchus Press office at 42a Formosa Street, London W9. It was a place for those interested in the #arts and the #sciences to meet, read #journals, look at works of art on the walls, hear talks, see #films, eat spaghetti and drink wine....'

https://gazelliarthouse.com/news/1408-book-launch-gaberbocchus-common-room-by-jasia/

#art #modernism #books #book

There’s some great ideas in this insightful piece by Irma Mastenbroek, '#Girl #Math Fundamentals – Proof by Subversion', published by the Institute of Network Cultures:

https://networkcultures.org/longform/2025/11/20/girl-math-fundamentals-proof-by-subversion/

Includes her engagement with the joke that '#crypto trading is really just #astrology for #boys'.

'The Independent #Intellectual vs #PostingZero and the #deadinternet' my short, ten minute introduction to SCREENSHOT BABEL, a workshop I ran with Ester Freider as part of The Cyberbaroque: A Neologism-Based Symposium, is now available on my Media Gifts blog:

http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2025/12/2/the-independent-intellectual-vs-posting-zero-and-the-dead-in.html

Organised by Everyone is a Girl (EIAG) (https://everyoneisagirl.cargo.site/), and held at Anomalous in #London on November 20, 2025, the symposium explored the idea of the cyberbaroque allegory (https://everyoneisagirl.substack.com/p/i-lost-track-of-what-is-real-personas) through presentations, a reading, a workshop, and a film screening.

Open Humanities Press has published Tom Cohen's #book Ecocide and Inscription vol. 1: Black Ops. Petrolepathy, Escaped Slaves, Cinemacide – A Tele-mnemonics for the After-Times.

Examining works by #Faulkner, #Morrison and #Hitchcock among others, Tom Cohen traces a ‘hyper-blackness’ that exceeds racial binaries and links to the viscous materiality of #oil. He argues that this #blackness before face or figuration offers a way to rupture the ‘Anthropocene’ spell and its attendant anaesthesias. By tracking inscriptions that melt back into a prefigural domain, Cohen outlines a literary structure of #climatechange itself, one that undoes conventional notions of meaning, reference, and #human exceptionalism.

Available #openaccess and in colour print from:

https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/black-ops/

Enjoyed the performance by the online #Palestinian #radio station #RadioAlhara on Sunday:

https://www.radioalhara.net/

They’re also on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@radioalhara

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4fwjcYp9xA

They were playing as part of the Peter Doig: House of #Music exhibition at the #SerpentineGallery in #london

https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/peter-doig-house-of-music/

Quit That Job: An Artworker’s Perspective by Louise Shelley:

https://notesfrombelow.org/article/quit-that-job-an-artworkers-perspective

A very good - if rather depressing - piece. A reminder that the grass isn’t necessarily greener outside of academia in the non-profit, community, and charity sectors (though I do wonder if the author had rather high expectations).
And that there, too, there is a discrepancy between what organisations say their politics are and how they actually run.

#class #politics #nonprofits #charity #community #art #work

I’m taking part in this event in #London on Monday evening.
THE CYBERBAROQUE: an everyone is a girl symposium

Ticket link and further details here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-cyberbaroque-an-eiag-symposium-tickets-1967666666969?aff=oddtdtcreator

WHAT IS THE CYBERBAROQUE?
In EIAG’s most self-indulgent event yet, curator Ester Freider presents a #symposium on the neologism 𝒸𝓎𝒷𝑒𝓇𝒷𝒶𝓇𝑜𝓆𝓊𝑒 from her essay ‘I LOST TRACK OF WHAT WAS REAL’. Using Belle Delphine, #deleuze and William Egginton as guiding influence(r)s, the essay constructs the 𝒸𝓎𝒷𝑒𝓇𝒷𝒶𝓇𝑜𝓆𝓊𝑒 as an allegory for #control or #governance through sophistry.

At the symposium, we’ll be tracing around this idea through presentations from writer Gabrielle Sicam, writer MPS Simpson, and Ester, a prose reading from Janice Chan, a ‘SCREENSHOT BABEL’ mini writing workshop from Ester and media theorist Gary Hall, a screening of Dana Dawud’s film MONAD, and exclusive EIAG merch.

Drinks provided by Anomalous.

Presentations start at 6:30 sharp.

Some images from the #Radiohead show at the O2 in #London on Monday. It was very good - but definitely not your usual #concert experience. More arty, more oblique. The band spent most of the night in the gloom, performing in the round, with no talking or song introductions. Even the screens were blurry and glitchy, like they are keeping the audience at a distance on purpose - which they presumably are. They know their modernism, don't they?

So there were only one or two moments when the lights came up and it felt like band and audience were sharing the same space and experience.

Although from a different night, this review captures it really well - right down to the sound issues (sludgy at times, missing the mid-range, although things improved after No Surprises), and the Radiohead audience lacking identity, which is funny but true:

https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/stories/radiohead-live-in-london-review/