In the wake of the organised left and the demise of working class self-identity, communisation offers a paradoxical means of superseding capitalism in the here and now whilst abandoning orthodox theories of revoluti

Heavily influenced by the Black Wave or dissident Yugoslav cinema of her childhood, artist Nada Prlja considers its unique balancing act between iconoclasm and idealism, individualism and communism to be exemplary. In an interview with Stefan Szczelkun, Prlja talks about the cultural context of communist Yugoslavia and its mutation into a consumer culture - a shift that her artwork pivots on

Bourgeois society's reduction of sexuality to the logic of (re)production results in a series of rigid dichotomies. Drawing on a rich history of radical theory, Marcel Stoetzler rejects sexual dimorphism and the gay/straight split to imagine a sexuality that is free to recreate itself

In this issue of Mute there is a generalised refusal to have our selves, in the widest sense of the word, put to work. As we start to see the real repercussions of the financial crisis bite, the Bretton Woods ideological state apparatus is looking rather threadbare. The strategy to placate social desires through cheap credit, property acquisition and the decoration of domestic surfaces continues against a muted backdrop of factory occupations, boss-nappings, foreclosures, and the dregs of what looks to be Big Brother’s last season.

Extrapolating from his talk on Anja Kirschner and David Panos’ recent film about 18th century folk legend Jack Sheppard, Benedict Seymour traces the intimate relationship between death, representation, fiction and speculation. Then, as now, the attempt to escape from capitalism’s calculus threatens to collapse into another moment of capture

A recently published volume of Guy Debord's early letters provides insights into a singular personality, and the fractious relationships that spawned the Situationist International. But, asks Sam Williams, how does this disenchanting account alter its spectacular legacy?

Lobotomist Walter Freeman to patient under local anaesthetic: What's going through your mind right now?

Patient: A knife.

- Quoted in Howard Dully's, My Lobotomy: A Memoir, 2007, (ghost-writer Charles Fleming)

 

How tired I am after another year of denunciation!

- Myles na gCopaleen

Against a background of culture’s wider digitisation, the Transmediale festival is moving beyond its new media art niche – but into what? asks Sam Williams