When rivalry still openly reigned between the Obama and Clinton camps of the Democratic Party, Ulrich Gutmair spoke to Sci-Fi writer and pioneer of cyberpunk, William Gibson, about American politics, the online age and Voodoo

UG: You invented the term cyberspace when only a few people were online, on an early version of the Internet. What is the most fascinating thing for you on the net today?

Before New Labour came to power, when reform of Britain's House of Lords was in the air, Anthony Barnett and Peter Ca

Variant magazine have produced a press release addressing the response of James Doherty, Media Manager of Culture and Sport Glasgow and President of the National Union of Journalists, to a text published in Variant by Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt. 'The main thrust of the article is to expose the connections between the various board members of CSG and its trading arm and their multifarious business interests and strategies for culture, which point to the privatisation of a valuable public service and the erosion of the common good.'

(reposting from the new Gasworks Pipeline commentary & materials site - very contemporary counter-Green polemic from 1970)

The French Group, which has been invited to this conference, has decided not to bring a positive contribution.

The group believes that too many matters, and essential ones, have not been voiced here as regards the social and political status of Design, as regards the ideological functions and the mythology of environment.

Since the 2006 Oaxaca revolt state repression in Mexico has contributed to popular feeling that peaceful protest has failed. Today, the country is on the threshold of a cycle of armed anti-capitalist struggle, argues Mihalis Mentinis

I'm posting Brecht's poem 'A Worker’s Speech To A Doctor' to draw attention to the recent publication of a pamphlet by the Radical History Network of North East London, The NHS IS 60: undervalued, under-funded, undermined.

Variant, one of the few magazines covering the grim process of stealth privatisation of Glasgow's cultural assets, appears to have been specifically targeted by one of the very privateers it criticised, and who has banned its distribution at Tramway gallery, in a highly defensive abuse of power:

The recent London performance of Luigi Nono's composition for orchestra and live-processing, Prometeo, was presented as an apotheosis of the Italian composer's work. John Wollaston essays a paraphrase of this complex 'super-capsule' of the untransmittable

In the 1960s and '70s musicians devised innovative forms of notation and protocol to liberate themselves from aesthetic and social conventions. Today's digital devotees of code based production and improvisation are continuing this tradition, argues Simon Yuill*

Taking issue with the argument that, after decentralisation, control is embodied within the protocols of networks, Harry Halpin gives a historical account of the all-too-human actors vying for power over the net. Not technical standards but immaterial aristocrats rule cyberspace and their seats of power are vulnerable to revolutionary attack

Declaring the economic off-limits to politics, the art world’s favourite philosopher, Jacques Rancière, does have something to hide, argues Paul Helliwell

‘There is no science… but of the hidden’ – a phrase by Bachelard taken up by the Althusserians.

– Jacques Rancière from ‘The Janus-Face of Politicized Art’[1]