A recording of the "What We May Also Do" written by Oliver Bennett in response to Anna Sebastian's exhibition of the same title. Staged at Verdurin in July 2024.

A woman approaches the gate of a walled city. Her admission depends on the depth of her moral liberation and embrace of boundless self-determination. A border guard assesses her character for its fit with the city’s society. In a series of interrogations, a charged relationship develops between the supplicant and her assessor. The process ultimately tests their belief in the system.

Bennett’s play develops a theatrical language that responds to Sebastian’s work and engages with the psychoanalytic ‘Gloria’ films which also inspire the paintings. It challenges contemporary attitudes to sex, religion, and power by exposing liberal values upheld by flawed individuals.

Written and directed by Oliver Bennett

Performed by Oliver Bennett and Kristin Milward

Verdurin - exhibitions, events, store

Information about the play and cast

Anna Sebastian's exhibition at Verdurin

Recording: Cameron Lee and Aimee Armstrong

American democracy is in crisis. The economic system is slowly subjecting Americans of nearly all income levels and backgrounds to enormous amounts of stress. The United States lacks the state capacity required to alleviate this stress, and politicians increasingly find that if they promise to solve economic problems, they are likely to disappoint voters. Instead, they encourage voters to blame each other.

The crisis cannot be solved, the economy cannot be set right, and democracy cannot be saved. But American democracy cannot be killed, either. Americans can’t imagine any compelling alternative political systems. And so, American democracy continues on, in a deeply unsatisfying way. Americans invent ever-more elaborate coping mechanisms in a desperate bid to go on. But it becomes increasingly clear that the way is shut. The American political system was made by those who are dead, and the dead keep it.

Benjamin Studebaker speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the runaway effects of globalisation, the false hope industry, cultural non-politics, and the very unlikely get-out scenarios.

Benjamin Studebaker is a political theorist whose work focuses on notions of legitimacy. He hosts the podcasts Political Theory 101.

• The equality/equity meme
• The 1619 Project
• No Labels, the ‘commonsense majority’ party

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The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy
Benjamin StudebakerThe Way is Shut

Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2023
ISBN 9783031282096

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For the past two decades, the arts and cultural establishment in the UK has been trying to engage a broader set of audiences in their work. Countless initiatives to make the arts more accessible to the public and to make them more relevant have been advocated for in policy and funding settlements.

But the dial on who participates and how much has not shifted, despite many thousands of projects trying to address the problem. And this isn’t even the punchline. Not only do the interventions not work, nobody involved in them admits that the interventions may have been a failure.

Having spent many years working in cultural policy studies and in arts practice, Leila Jancovich and David Stevenson take the arts and culture sector to task over this fiction. Their book Failures in Cultural Participation puts a mirror to the industry and invites cultural policymakers, organisations, and practitioners to confront their failures.

David Stevenson speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the culture sector’s refusal to acknowledge failure in widening participation and moving the debate from the ‘value’ of culture to considering how policies can be designed and implemented. David argues for an honest and transparent acknowledgement of failure at individual, organisational and governmental levels.

• The Failspace Project tools
• A special issue of the Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation edited by Leila and David
• David’s “I hate opera” paper.

Leila Jancovich is a professor of Cultural Policy and Participation at the University of Leeds. Before entering academia, she worked for many years in the arts and festivals sector as a producer, researcher, and policy maker.

David Stevenson is the Dean of The School of Arts, Social Sciences, and Management at Queen Margaret University. His research focuses on relations of power and the production of value within the cultural sector.

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Failures in Cultural Participation

Leila Jancovich, David Stevenson

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Artists Remake the World puts forward an account of contemporary art’s political ambitions and potential. Surveying such innovations as evidence-driven art, socially engaged art, and ecological art, the book explores how artists have attempted to offer bold solutions to the world’s problems.

Simoniti systematises the perspectives of contemporary art as a force for political and social change. At its best, he argues, contemporary art allows us to imagine utopias and presents us with hard truths, which mainstream political discourse cannot yet articulate. Covering subjects such as climate change, social justice, and global inequality, Artists Remake the World offers a philosophy of contemporary art as an experimental branch of politics.

Vid Simoniti is a Lecturer in Philosophy of Art at the University of Liverpool. He is the co-editor, with James Fox, of Art and knowledge after 1900.

• Ryan Trecartin, P.opular S.ky (section ish), 2009
• My conversation with Fuller and Weizman on Forensic Architecture and Investigative Aesthetics

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Artists Remake the World
A Contemporary Art ManifestoVid Simoniti

Published by Yale University Press, 2023
ISBN 9780300266290

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Find many more interviews, projects, and my writing at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://petitpoi.net/⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can sign up for my newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://petitpoi.net/newsletter/⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Between Discipline and a Hard Place
The Value of Contemporary Art

Alana Jelinek

Published by Bloomsbury, 2020
ISBN 9781350100473

Some fields have an easier time describing themselves than others. “History is the study of past events.” “Biology is the study of living organisms.” But art? Is art a discipline? Is it a practice? Who gets to answer this most fundamental of questions, and why do we prefer not to try? Between Discipline and a Hard Place, written from the perspective of a practising artist, proposes that, against a groundswell of historians, museums and commentators claiming to speak on behalf of art, it is artists alone who may define what art really is.

Between Discipline and a Hard Place is a passionate treatise arguing for a new way of understanding art that forefronts the role of the artist and the importance of inclusion within both the concept of art and the art world.

Alana Jelinek speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about a disciplined and disciplinary approach to thinking about art and its value outside the current preoccupation with economic considerations and the great potential of interdisciplinary working.

Alana Jelinek is an artist and a researcher at the University of Hertfordshire.

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Find many more interviews, projects, and my writing at https://petitpoi.net/

You can sign up for my newsletter at https://petitpoi.net/newsletter/

Support my work: https://petitpoi.net/support/