Art in Permacrisis

Geert Lovink and Platform Brutality

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 12:59:31 GMT

Geert Lovink joins me in the studio for this new episode of Art in Permacrisis. Geert is a media theorist and the founder of the Institute of Network Cultures. He has a background in the Amsterdam squatting movement, he invented the notion of 'tactical media' several decades ago, and in recent years, he has focused on platform and social media critique. In this episode, we discuss his newest book, Platform Brutality. We talk about the violent turn of the tech overlords, technofeudalism, the question of tactical media today, antifascist figure design, and the special responsibility of art.

LINKS & REFERENCES

Platform Brutality: Closing Down Internet Toxicity: https://valiz.nl/en/publications/platform-brutality

Notes on deletion and technological sacrifice: https://networkcultures.org/geert/2025/08/27/notes-on-deletion-and-technological-sacrifice

Geert's two cents in the technofeudalism debate: https://networkcultures.org/geert/2024/03/22/cloud-capital-and-platform-regression-review-of-janis-varoufakis-techno-feudalism

The origins of the Duckrabbit: https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/duckrabbits-unveiled-a-sneak-peek-at-the-postartistic-theory-and-practice

ABOUT

Art in Permacrisis is a podcast on the organisation of art workers in the face of the ever-growing stack of crises, published by the Institute of Network Cultures and Caradt. This episode was hosted by Sepp Eckenhaussen.

Justin O’Connor and Culture Is Not an Industry

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 15:21:40 GMT

Kicking off a new season, I sat down with Justin O’Connor, a global policy expert, author, and a Professor of Cultural Economy at the University of South Australia. We talked about Justin's book Culture Is Not an Industry: Reclaiming Art and Culture for the Common Good. He explains how theoretically poor the concept of the ‘creative industry’ actually is, and how it has messed up cultural policy in many countries. We then explored an alternative policy vision: art and culture for the common good, anchored in the foundational economy.

LINKS & REFERENCES

Justin O’Connor’s website: justin-oconnor.com

Culture Is Not an Industry: Reclaiming Art and Culture for the Common Good: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526171269

The Foundational Economy Collective: foundationaleconomy.com

Reset: Een nieuw begin voor kunst en cultuur: starfishbooks.org/justin-oconnor-reset

ABOUT

Art in Permacrisis is a podcast on the organization of art workers in the face of the ever-growing stack of crises, published by the Institute of Network Cultures and Caradt. This episode was hosted by Sepp Eckenhaussen and edited by Anielek Niemyjski.

Gizem Üstüner’s Low-Budget Projects

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 16:45:04 GMT

Gizem Üstüner is an artist and researcher based in Amsterdam, whose work is a direct confrontation with the realities of precarity, migration, and womanhood. In recent years, she’s been traveling to Yogyakarta, Athens, Istanbul, and back to Amsterdam for the long-term ‘Low-Budget Projects’. Wherever she goes, Gizem seeks to build solidarity through one-on-one exchanges with peers navigating struggles similar to hers. Over coffees, cigarettes, nights out, or moments of protest, she listens, connects, and shares in the everyday tactics and resistance strategies that cultural practitioners develop in response to the cultural, economic, and political infrastructures they inhabit. In this podcast, we discuss the different chapters of Low Budget Projects, and what they tell us about transparency, solidarity, humor, and resistant joy among art workers’ communities.

LINKS & REFERENCES

Low-Budget Projects IG: instagram.com/lowbudgetprojects

Low-Budget Projects Amsterdam: https://framerframed.nl/en/projecten/low-budget-projects-do-not-expect-anything-out-of-the-blue

Low-Budget Projects Athens: yellowbrick.gr/step-47-low-budget-projects

Gizem on Stegi Radio: stegi.radio/artist/gizem-uestuener

ABOUT

Vermeir & Heiremans between Speculative Fiction and Operational Realism

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 16:41:53 GMT

Vermeir & Heiremans started their collaborative artistic practice, when they defined their apartment in Brussels as an artwork and created the Art House Index in 2006. In the following decades, they developed a deep artistic research practice focusing on the interplay between art, speculation, finance, and real estate. Ronny Heiremans and Katleen Vermeir have also successfully worked on Belgian art policy development and co-founded the artistic research platform Jubilee. We cover a lot of ground in our conversation, from financialisation for the public good to automated art dividends, real estate speculation, bottom-up policymaking, new ways of mutualization, and the lure of art cooperatives.

Links & References

Website of Vermeir & Heiremans: https://www.in-residence.be Art House Index: https://www.in-residence.be/extensions/view/39 / http://ahi.in-residence.be/chart.php Article on ‘A Modest Proposal’, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/finance-and-society/article/modest-proposal-in-a-black-box/4586E97058B4581F71795AEDBB647E1C Art workers proof (kunstwerkattest): https://www.workinginthearts.be/nl/professioneel/kunstwerkattest/kunstwerkattest/wat-is-het-kunstwerkattest Jubilee: https://www.jubilee-art.org/ Commons to Coop Summer School: https://kunsthal.gent/en/agenda/jubilee-summer-school-2024-commons-to-coop

Cover image: graph illustrating A Modest Proposal (in a Blackbox)

About

Art in Permacrisis is a podcast on the organization of art workers in the face of the ever-growing stack of crises, published by the Institute of Network Cultures and Caradt. The podcast hosts are Candela Cubria and Sepp Eckenhaussen. This episode was recorded in Brussels, in a studio generously made available by Rune Peitersen and Level Five Cooperative.

Kate Rich and Radical Administration

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 16:36:06 GMT

For this episode I had a conversation with artist, trader, and researcher Kate Rich. We discussed ‘feral trade’, an international grocery business set up by Kate, for which her traveling (art world) friends and acquaintances act as couriers. We then talked about ‘radmin’, a long-term effort to radicalize the administrative work that’s always there, but usually remains in the background, even in social art practices.

Links & References

Feral Trade website: https://feraltrade.org

2013 interview about Feral Trade: https://www.wired.com/2013/07/whats-new-with-kate-rich-and-feral-trade

Katherine Gibson and Kate Rich, ‘Feral Trade: Taking back Markets for People and the Planet’: https://unlikely.net.au/issue-1/feral-trade

Radmin Reader 2020: https://fo.am/publications/radmin-reader-2020

Article by FoAM-founders: https://www.designdecode.org/maja-kuzmanovic-nik-gaffney Article about the Institute for Experiments with Business (IBEX):https://anarchive.fo.am/crystal/grey-skies-thinking

For 2024-2027, Kate is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Brave New Alps (Italy), where her research centres on the everyday work of administration as a regularly overlooked place for critical, creative and collective practice: https://titipi.org/frictions

About

Art in Permacrisis is a podcast on the organization of art workers in the face of the ever-growing stack of crises, published by the Institute of Network Cultures and Caradt. The podcast hosts are Candela Cubria and Sepp Eckenhaussen. This episode was recorded in Brussels, in a studio generously offered by Rune Peitersen and Level Five Cooperative.

Inte Gloerich and Decentralised Autonomous Organisations

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 16:31:33 GMT

Inte Gloerich is a critical media and technology researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures. She is one of the core people behind the research community MoneyLab and recently finished her PhD on feminist blockchain imaginaries. In this episode of Art in Permacrisis, we discuss blockchain beyond the hype, and beyond the wish to get rich fast. How can blockchain be a tool for radical imagination and decentralised autonomous organising in the arts? We discuss concepts and dilemmas, and briefly revisit what’s left of the NFT boom, but we mainly dive into the practices of contemporary DAOs, from Dayra, to Black Swan, The Sphere, Circles, and CultureStake. What works? What doesn’t work? How? And why?

Inte Gloerich’s new book, titled ‘Artists, Activists, and Worldbuilders on Decentralised Autonomous Organisations: Conversations about Funding, Self-Organisation, and Reclaiming the Future’, will be published by the Institute of Network Cultures soon. Keep an eye out on networkcultures.org.

Links & References

Inte’s website: www.integloerich.nl

MoneyLab: www.networkcultures.org/moneylab

Terra0: www.terra0.org

Video explaining Dayra: www.vimeo.com/721710848?

Article explaining Black Swan DAO: www.kw-berlin.de/en/black-swan-dao

Circles Coop Berlin: www.circles.coop

The Sphere: www.thesphere.as

Commons[dot]art: www.casco.art/projects/commons-art

ReUnion: www.reunionnetwork.org

CultureStake: www.culturestake.org

Furtherfield: www.furtherfield.org

About

Art in Permacrisis is a podcast on organizing art workers in the face of the ever-growing stack of crises, published by the Institute of Network Cultures and Caradt. This episode was hosted by Sepp Eckenhaussen and edited by Salome Berdzenishvili.

Yazan Khalili and the Crisis Economy

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 16:26:18 GMT

This is the fourth episode of Art in Permacrisis, a podcast on the organization of art workers in the face of the ever-growing stack of crises. How can artists make a living without selling their souls? Can we imagine and practice a sustainable art economy beyond precarity? How should we transform the circulation of artworks, the curriculum of art and design academies, the exhibition programs of museums, and the organization of collectives and unions? We invite speakers with combined backgrounds in art, theory, and organizing to share their insights.

At the Shadia Abu Ghazaleh Campus of the People’s Free University in Amsterdam, we talked to Yazan Khalili. Yazan is an artist, architect, and cultural activist living in and out of Palestine. Some of Yazan’s many roles are: PhD candidate at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, co-founder of Radio Alhara (since 2020), and co-founder of The Question of Funding-collective (since 2019). Our conversation focuses on crisis and the crisis economy as a defining force in the arts. We also discuss the practice of infrastructural critique, or how to build alternative art institutions from the bottom up. And, of course, we talk about Palestine.

Art in Permacrisis is a podcast of the Institute of Network Cultures and Caradt. It is hosted by Candela Cubria and Sepp Eckenhaussen. Tech and editing by Tommaso Campagna.

The Shadia Abu Ghazaleh Campus of the People’s Free University in Amsterdam was evicted on June 13th, but the organizing continues. To keep up with the actions, you can follow @peoples.university.amsterdam on Instagram.

Links

Yazan’s website: https://www.yazankhalili.com

The Question of Funding: https://documenta-fifteen.de/en/lumbung-members-artists/the-question-of-funding

‘What We Talk about when We Talk about Crisis’, interview on e-flux: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/111/346846/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-crisis-a-conversation-part-1

Radio Alhara: radioalhara.net & https://linktr.ee/radioalhara

Katja Praznik and Feminist Art Unions

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 16:21:17 GMT

This is the third episode of Art in Permacrisis, a podcast on the organization of art workers in the face of the ever-growing stack of crises. How can artists make a living without selling their souls? Can we imagine and practice a sustainable art economy beyond precarity? How should we transform the circulation of artworks, the curriculum of art and design academies, the exhibition programs of museums, and the organization of collectives and unions? We invite speakers with combined backgrounds in art, theory, and organizing to share their insights.

In this episode, we talk to Katja Praznik. Katja is an associate professor at the University at Buffalo’s Arts Management Program and the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies. Our conversation focuses on her book,Art Work: Invisible Labour and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism as well as questions of strategy and the future of work in the arts.

Art in Permacrisis is a podcast of the Institute of Network Cultures and Caradt. It is hosted by Candela Cubria and Sepp Eckenhaussen. Tech by Tommaso Campagna. Editing by Candela Cubria.

Links

Art Work: Invisible Labour and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism (English) https://utorontopress.com/9781487508418/art-work/

Art Work: Invisible Labour and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism (Slovenian): https://maska.si/knjiga/katja-praznik-delo-umetnosti-nevidno-delo-in-zapuscina-jugoslovanskega-socializma/

Bifo’s piece on student protests/BDS protests about Palestine: https://illwill.com/sabotage-and-self-organization

Goran Đorđević’s blog with all the documentation about the artists strike: https://whatwasmodernart.wordpress.com/2020/09/11/international-strike-of-artists/

New Books Network podcast interview: https://newbooksnetwork.com/art-work

Slovenian art workers union ZASUK: https://zasuk.si/

Emanuele Braga and Universal Basic Income

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 16:16:43 GMT

This is the second episode of Art in Permacrisis, a podcast on the organization of art workers in the face of the ever-growing stack of crises. How can artists make a living without selling their souls? Can we imagine and practice a sustainable art economy beyond precarity? How should we transform the circulation of artworks, the curriculum of art and design academies, the exhibition programs of museums, and the organization of collectives and unions? We invite speakers with combined backgrounds in art, theory, and organizing to share their insights.

For this episode, we talk to Emanuele Braga. Emanuele is an artist, researcher and activist. Over the past decades, he has been involved in many important grassroots initiatives, including MACAO, a center for art and Culture in Milan, and the Institute of Radical Imagination. This conversation focuses mostly on Art for Universal Basic Income (manifesto), which was produced by the Institute of Radical Imagination in 2022, and which was co-edited by Emanuele, together with Marco Baravalle and Gabriella Riccio.

Art in Permacrisis is a podcast of the Institute of Network Cultures and Caradt. It is hosted by Candela Cubria and Sepp Eckenhaussen. Tech by Tommaso Campagna. Editing by Giulia Timis.

Links

Cover image: Art for UBI Terraforming, courtesy of Emanuele Braga

Art for UBI (Manifesto): https://shop.b-r-u-n-o.it/products/art-for-ubi-manifesto

Art for UBI petition: https://www.change.org/p/european-commission-art-for-ubi-manifesto

Institute of Radical Imagination: https://instituteofradicalimagination.org/

MACAO: https://www.macaomilano.it/spip.php?article166

Museum of the Commons: https://vanabbemuseum.nl/en/museum/support-the-museum/linternationale

Gathering into the Maelstrom (part of Venice Biennale): https://instituteofradicalimagination.org/2024/02/15/gathering-into-the-maesltrom-platform-action-exhibition/

Kuba Szreder and the Projectariat

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 14:54:05 GMT

This is the first episode of Art in Permacrisis, a podcast on the organization of art workers in the face of the ever-growing stack of crises. We invite speakers with combined backgrounds in art, theory, and organizing to share their insights.

For this episode, we are welcoming Kuba Szreder. Kuba is a lecturer in art theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and a freelance curator. He co-founded the Free/Slow University of Warsaw and the Office for Postartistic Practices. The main topic of our conversation is Kuba’s book ABC of the Projectariat: Living and Working in a Precarious Art World.

Art in Permacrisis is a podcast of the Institute of Network Cultures and Caradt. It is hosted by Candela Cubria and Sepp Eckenhaussen. Tech by Tommaso Campagna. Editing by Giulia Timis.

Links

Cover Image: picture of The Three Arrows, an anti-fascist demonstration in Warsaw, 2019: https://krolikokaczki.pl/en/trzy-strzaly

Kuba’s book, ABC of the Projectariat: Living and Working in a Precarious Art World, published by Manchester University Press in 2021: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526161321

Kuba Szreder in conversation with Pierre d’Alancaizes about ABC of the Projectariat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABwlg5-AQMU&ab_channel=Pierred%E2%80%99Alancaisez

INC longform ‘Art at Work: The Role of Internet Memes in the Postartistic Age’ by Agnieszka Antkowiak: https://networkcultures.org/longform/2023/06/21/art-at-work-the-role-of-internet-memes-in-the-postartistic-age

The Office for Postartistic Services: https://beczmiana.pl/bup/bup-in-english

Duckrabbits.com, the archive of postartistic practices that have taken place in Poland since 2015: https://krolikokaczki.pl/en

The repository of the Anti-Fascist Year in Poland: https://rokantyfaszystowski.org/en

The Museum of Arte Util: https://www.arte-util.org

Plausible Artworlds by Basecamp: https://www.plausibleartworlds.org

Documenta 15 & Lumbung: https://documenta-fifteen.de/en

The Postartisic congress in Berlin June 6-9 at the Floating University: https://konteksty.to/2024

The Budapest Conference Special (w/ Constant Dullaart)

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 16:29:12 GMT

We kick off a new season of Art in Permacrisis with a short special episode. From the 25th until the 26th of October, we were in Budapest for a conference of media artists and researchers called MetaForumX: PermaCrises. One of the contributions to MetaForum was a podcast created by media artist Constant Dullaart. It’s a fresh take on the notion of permacrisis, the development of AI, and the role of art.

In the coming months, we will be publishing a bunch of exciting new episodes. There is one about the concept and practice radical administration, one about decentralized autonomous organizations, one about how to hijack the systems of financial speculation as an artist, and more.

Links

Cover Image: Constant Dullaart, Accepting the Job, 2023. MetaForumX – PermaCrises website: networkcultures.org/events/metaforumx-permacrises Constant Dullaart’s website: www.constantdullaart.com/