Tomorrow's screening programme with works by Chris Boyd, Thomson & Craighead, Eva & Franco Mattes, George Barber, Neue Deutsche Kunst, and Renée plus presentations by Helen Rollins, John-Robin Bold, and Tony D Sampson. buff.ly/hWuYoBG

Nice review of INVERSION in The Berliner.

I went on Foidcast to talk with Rose and Dani about gay INVERSION (sorry), how we’re all living in China already (paranoia), right-wing art (tumbleweed), death drive aesthetics (!), and my miserable failure to find a wife (argh). Apple Podcasts buff.ly/agMFJIT Patreon buff.ly/YI1FSkG

Some arrivals at the store: Travis Jeppesen. Bruce Benderson, Neema Parvini, Pascal Bruckner, Ivan Nicolai, Pasolini, Helen Rollins, Fassbdiner...

"Explore Sir John Soane's Museum, travel through magical portals to ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and discover how classical architecture inspired one of Britain's greatest architects." The Soane Museum has launched an "education portal" in MINECRAFT. buff.ly/nGJp3zV

Saturday at Verdurin: I, Internet What does it mean to make art in the machine? 📅 31 January, 2-6pm 🎟️ buff.ly/hWuYoBG 🎬 Nobody TM

A Spanish translation of Roger Lancaster's essay 'Being and Having in the Gay World' from Inversion is published in El Salmón. buff.ly/jfpx4wa

Coming up at Verdurin: Margins, with Travis Jeppesen and Bruce Benderson Giuliani cleaned up seedy New York, but the writers spawned by the old city, still pick at the scab. Like a late-in-life sex tourist, their books hunt for the subaltern and marginal in places that have not yet become sterile.

Next at Verdurin: I, Internet As our consciousness evolves in networks and on platforms, our subjectivity is changing in profound yet unexpected ways. If temporal discontinuity is a feature of our post-internet state of mind, this certainly holds true for the history of internet-inspired art.

Gotta give it to Labour, they know how to silence the ‘critical industries’ before they’ve even registered what’s going on.

Just announced: Shakespeare, Elites, Power Neema Parvini in conversation with Oliver Bennett 📅 11 March, 7pm 📍 Verdurin, Hoxton 🎟️ buff.ly/yPxrdWX

notes and notices: Condo: Bethan Huws, Andrea Büttner: Birds at Tschudi at Hollybush Gardens ★★☆☆☆ For an exhibition that ostensibly concerns itself with the marvel of conceptual evolution, Birds is depressingly arid. Posing as an archaeology of signs, women, and their entanglement, it amounts to

Coming up at Verdurin: I, Internet What does it mean to make art in the machine? 🎬 Eva & Franco Mattes, Emily's Video, 2012 With contributions by Helen Rollins, John-Robin Bold, and Tony D Sampson, plus screenings of works by Chris Boyd, Thomson & Craighead,, Neue Deutsche Kunst, and others.

notes and notices: Sophie Giraux, Albert Dietrich: Condo: The Ambassadors at City Galerie Wien at Ginny on Frederick ★☆☆☆☆ Everything about this show, beginning with its banal title—since when is shipping art from Vienna some radical emissarial act?—feels lazy. Giraux’s large wall-hung cast rubber

How it feels being Mme Verdurin on a Monday morning. buff.ly/PvpqU5e

notes and notices: Condo: Paride Maria Calcia, Hubert Duprat, Irene Fenara at Zero… at Brunette Coleman ★★★★☆ The word ‘organic’ once encompassed forms of matter that were anything but. A decade or so ago, synthetic building materials, such as Paride Maria Calvia’s stained, greenish fibreboard,

Coming up at Verdurin: I, Internet Making Art in the Machine 📅 31 January, 2-6pm 🎟️ buff.ly/KSqNMVo With contributions by Helen Rollins, John-Robin Bold, and Tony D Sampson, plus screenings of works by Chris Boyd, Eva and Franco Mattes,, Neue Deutsche Kunst, et al. 🎬 Renée, Marginalia, 2025

Until artists start making better art, my monthly sub is going to these three.

Went to the 9am press preview at the National Gallery in the hope that - since art is suffering - the work would be good because I’d got up so early. Turns out that’s not how this works.

As our consciousness evolves in networks and on platforms, our subjectivity is changing in profound yet unexpected ways. If temporal discontinuity is a feature of our post-internet state of mind, this certainly holds true for the history of internet-inspired art itself. 📽️ Neue Deutsche Kunst

"Art is no longer a sure route to relief. Indeed, it is often the cause of anguish." Sex, drugs, and art. Nan Goldin's 'Ballad of Sexual Dependency' opens at Gagosian tonight. I wrote about this seminal work a couple of years ago for The Critic when it received cinematic treatment. buff.ly/yFeGdeY

What does it mean to make art in the machine? As our consciousness evolves in networks and on platforms, our subjectivity is changing in profound yet unexpected ways. If temporal discontinuity is a feature of our post-internet state of mind, /

Judging by the press releases announcing museum and major gallery programmes for 2026 which I finally dug up from my inbox: - decolonisation is out, - indigneneiety is on its last legs, - but QUEERMAXXING is in. And I'm not planning on seeing any of it.

"If today’s social media is the equivalent of Rosenkrantz with her microphone — presenting an invitation, if not an obligation to create narratives — the idea that these recent technologies uniquely incentivise the production of inauthentic accounts rings hollow.

Our events planned for this year include symposia on art and religion, decolonisation, literacy, folk culture, and internet art plus courses on the principles of judgment and rhetoric. Support these projects if you can verdur.in/support/

2026 is going to be the year of a new culture. Please support Verdurin and our programme of events, courses, and publishing to help us promote new ideas neglected by legacy institutions.

Coming up at Verdurin: I, Internet What does it mean to make art in the machine? As our consciousness evolves in networks and on platforms, our subjectivity is changing in profound yet unexpected ways. Recent works by often anonymous, post-millennial artists appear to think on, as much as about, /

Marcas Lancaster: Anathema Was homosexuality’s degeneration foretold in the libertine excess of de Sade’s Sodom? Lancaster narrates the unpalatable truths of the AIDS crisis in florid, viral detail, finding in gay excess an image of liberal life itself.

I returned to my podcasting alma mater @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social to speak with Caleb Zakarian and Amir Naaman about 'Inversion'. 👂🎧 buff.ly/v0R2CSU

Does aestheticising technological futures curtail our ability to critique them? Have we given up on understanding the systems that shape our lives on grounds of their efficiency masquerading in promises of liberation?

Yotam Feldman: Twilights of Homosexuality Is homosexuality the Trojan horse of Western ideology? Taking his cue from Alexander Dugin’s ‘realist’ denunciation, Feldman exposes the homosexual’s propensity for deceit and intrigue.

notes and notices: Karimah Ashadu: Tendered at Camden Art Centre ★★☆☆☆ Ashadu’s films are as banal as they are overbought with glib signifiers. Take King of Boys, a five-minute survey of butchery in a meat market in the slums of Lagos. The document is trivial on the face of it: knives hack through

Oliver Davis: The Great Gay Replacement What should we do with bad gays? Reading the one-time cult erotica author Renaud Camus, Davis discovers the roots of the writer’s turn to immigration conspiracy theory in his homosexuality. @oliverjdavis.bsky.social

Why is the art commissioned for churches - such as the 'Hear Us' graffiti at Canterbury Cathedral - so woefully uninspiring? Does contemporary art have anything to say about faith, or vice versa? The answer lies in the English Reformation. Me in The Critic.

notes and notices: Means of Reproduction at Emalin ★★☆☆☆ Turning the gallery into a gift shop – of arty t-shirts, tote bags, and homeware – is the dealer’s gimmick of last resort. It turns critique itself into a commodity, revealing, to anyone still somehow unaware of it, the art object’s /

Last night at Verdurin with Ronan McCrea, Jo Bartosch, and Amir Naaman, discussing 'Inversion' and 'The End of the Gay Rights Revolution'. Get the books: buff.ly/Mwn1pYY buff.ly/jzoykmt

Travis Jeppesen: Gay Shame, A Retrospective Why can’t gay culture sustain its once-vital taste for transgression? Jeppesen bemoans the rise of conformism, indicting today’s queer intellectual and artistic scene with censoriousness and grift.

Tonight, with Ronan McCrea, Amir Naaman, and Jo Bartosch. buff.ly/Z88iXKx

The Christmas tree is up.

Monkeypox returns to London in time for the launch of Inversion on Friday.

This Friday at Verdurin: After the Orgy What happens when all social struggles — for freedoms, rights, and acceptance — have been won? How may gay men map a future without becoming consumed by culture war narratives and without falsifying the historical record of their own emancipation?

Pierre d’Alancaisez: Freedom of Disassociation What is the gay ‘community?’ Finding that ‘everyone in’ is the door policy of both queer clubs and nation-states, d’Alancaisez explores attempts to defend gayness through appeals to essence, culture, and politics.

Are gays destined to be lone wolves? Is homosexuality really the narcissism of the soul? Is there such a thing as a gay community? Amir Naaman and I spoke with Stephen Adubato on his Cracks in Postmodernity podcast about Inversion.

Launching Inversion in Berlin last night.

Ran Heilbrunn: Abolish Queer Theory! Why has queer theory failed to account for the reality of gay life? Heilbrunn charges the field’s luminaries with an aversion to the male body, male sex, and, ultimately, men.

The final event of 2025 at Verdurin is 'After the Orgy' - the launch for 'Inversion' in discussion with author of 'The End of the Gay Rights Revolution' Ronan McCrea, hosted by Jo Bartosch.

Launching Inversion in Berlin this Friday, with Travis Jeppesen, Amir Naaman, and Ran Heilbrunn. 📅 5 December, 7.30pm 📍 Village, Berlin 🎟️ buff.ly/AN23qSP

Inversion is annoying people as intended. buff.ly/RS3m5XN

Amir Naaman: Wars of Desire Why do Western queer activists identify with fighters engaged in brutal conflicts on the other side of the world? Naaman proposes that the fantasy of righteous battle is an erotic, rather than a political issue.