Supercommunity and Duty Free Art

Somerset House Studios in partnership with Verso Books is delighted to host a double launch featuring Hito Steyerl in conversation with Nina Power on themes related to Steyerl’s new book, Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War, and the editors of e-flux journal discussing the new collection Supercommunity: Diabolical Togetherness Beyond Contemporary Art. Adrian Lahoud and David Hodge will read from their contributions to Supercommunity. 

Both titles are published by Verso Books and will be available in limited release at the event.

Featuring
Hito Steyerl in conversation with Nina Power
Contributions from Supercommunity authors Adrian Lahoud and David Hodge
Panel discussion with e-flux journal editors Julieta Aranda, Anton Vidokle, and Brian Kuan Wood

Tickets available here. Entry includes a glass of wine. 

The event will be live-streamed from Somerset House Studios. 

Supercommunity: Diabolical Togetherness Beyond Contemporary Art
Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle, editors
Introduction by Antonio Negri
(Verso Books and e-flux, 2017)
480 pages, 60 b&w images
Hardcover, paperback, e-book
ISBN 9781786633590
Design: Studio Remco van Bladel

“Supercommunity traverses every experience, every struggle. It gives voice to art as it does to social critique, to the critique of science in the same way as the syndicalism of the old and new labour-power, to the struggle of artists as precarious workers and the precarious workers as artists.”
–Antonio Negri

“I convert care to cruelty, and cruelty back to care. I convert political desires to economic flows and data, and then I convert them back again. I convert revolutions to revelations. I don’t want, I want to leave, and then disperse myself everywhere and all the time.”

Invited to exhibit at the 56th Venice Biennale, e-flux journal produced a single issue over a four-month span, publishing an article a day both online and on site from Venice.

In essays, poems, short stories, and plays, artists and theorists trace the negative collective that is the subject of contemporary life, in which art, the internet, and globalization have shed their utopian guises but persist as naked power, in the face of apocalyptic ecological disaster and against the claims of the social commons.

Introduction by Antonio Negri. Edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle; with guest-edited sections by Raqs Media Collective, Tom Holert, Natasha Ginwala, Boris Groys, Pedro Neves Marques. 

With contributions by: Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Sophia Al Maria, Allora & Calzadilla, Anne Anlin Cheng, Julieta Aranda, Kader Attia, Giuliana Bruno, Ilya Budraitskis, Luis Camnitzer, Federico Campagna, Yin-Ju Chen, Ted Chiang, Keti Chukhrov, Douglas Coupland, Déborah Danowski, Liu Ding, Marisol de la Cadena, Jimmie Durham, Sean Dockray, Hu Fang, Harun Farocki, Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.), Leela Gandhi, Natasha Ginwala, Lesley Green, Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, David Hodge, Tom Holert,  James T. Hong, Hiwa K, Carolyn L. Kane, Showkat Kathjoo, Brian Kuan Wood, Adam Kleinman, Hassan Khan, Adrian Lahoud, Lawrence Liang, Maria Lind, Wietske Maas, Raqs Media Collective, Guy Mannes-Abbott, Metahaven, Naeem Mohaiemen, Gean Moreno, Antonio Negri, Arjuna Neuman, Ahmet Öğüt, Pedro Neves Marques, Ernesto Oroza, Jussi Parikka, Matteo Pasquinelli, Nina Power, Jon Rich, Uzma Z. Rizvi, Mohammad Salemy, Shveta Sarda, Steven Shaviro, Emily Segal, Aaron Schuster, Sher Singh, Bhrigupati Singh, Jonas Staal, Gertrude Stein, Charles Stankievech, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Jan Verwoert, Anton Vidokle, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.), Carol Yinghua Lu, Ala Younis, Hamed Yousefi, Arseny Zhilyaev.

Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War
Hito Steyerl
(Verso Books, 2017)
256 pages, 20 b&w images
Hardcover, e-book
ISBN 9781786632432

“The highest duty of theory and art is to grasp and articulate their own time. In our time Hito Steyerl fulfills this duty as nobody else. Her investigations of the fate of images and words in the age of their global circulation are always focused and precise—but also adventurous, unexpected and fascinating.”
–Boris Groys

In Duty Free Art, filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl wonders how we can appreciate, or even make art in the present age. What can we do when arms manufacturers sponsor museums and some of the world’s most valuable artworks are used as a fictional currency in a global futures market that has nothing to do with the works themselves? Can we distinguish between creativity and the digital white noise that bombards our everyday lives? Exploring artifacts as diverse as video games, Wikileaks files, the proliferation of spam, and political actions, she exposes the paradoxes within globalization, political economies, visual culture, and the status of art production.

Hito Steyerl is a writer and filmmaker. Her works were exhibited i.a. at the 32nd São Paulo Biennial (2016), the 9th Berlin Biennale (2016), the German Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), and Documenta 12 (2007).

Nina Power teaches philosophy at the University of Roehampton and criticalwriting in art and design at the Royal College of Art. She has written widely on culture, philosophy, and politics.

Adrian Lahoud is Dean of the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art. 

David Hodge is Head of Art History and Contextual Studies at The Art Academy in London.

Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, and Anton Vidokle are editors of e-flux journal. 

Somerset House Studios is a new experimental workspace in the centre of London connecting artists, makers and thinkers with audiences. The Studios are a platform for the development of new creative projects and collaboration, promoting work that pushes bold ideas, engages with urgent issues and pioneers new technologies.

Verso Books is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world, publishing one hundred books a year.