In the second half of episode 12 — for patrons and subscribers only — Tish, Adam and Holly Lewis focus on questions of art, culture and individual subjectivity as they relate to the pandemic, the idea of the working-class seizing virtual technologies, automatic writing vs. anxiety and death, haunting the rich, revenge and utopia, the sculpting of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary violence, the futurity of the doomed, blockchain, video games, and the loss of texture in the virtual world. They also discuss the dynamic of collective and individual imagining and the warm stream of Marxism.
Books, articles, stories and pamphlets discussed: “Alain Badiou: ‘People cling onto identities… it is a world opposed to the encounter,’” Verso blog (2014); Albert Camus, The Plague; Mike Davis, The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism (Verso, 2022); Hal Draper, The Mind of Clark Kerr (October 1964); Daniel DeFoe, Journal of the Plague Year; Mary Shelley, The Last Man, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Roger Malvin’s Burial” (1832); Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820); Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 ; Karl Marx, The German Ideology (1845-46).
Artworks discussed: The Born Again Labor Museum’s Communist Manifesto Redistribution Project and Cat without a Grin ; Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Triumph of Death (1562) ; medieval plague crucifixes; the agit-prop of Gran Fury and Act Up ; exquisite corpses ; David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Buffalo) (1988) ; Anupam Roy’s Exodus series; Labani Jangi’s Exodus series; Egon Schiele’s The Family (1918)
Locust Radio is hosted by Tish Turl and Adam Turl. Locust Radio is produced by Alexander Billet and Drew Franzblau. Music is by Omnia Sol.