Coming up at Verdurin: Back to Haunt Us - From the Supernatural to the Paranormal. How do we accept the incompleteness of the universe itself — not merely our limited knowledge of it — without becoming lost in the arbitrary nature of meaning?

notes and notices: Sophie Huckfield: Lady Ludd at Outpost, Norwich ★★☆☆☆ How does contemporary art support the labour struggle against AI and automation? Huckfield’s question is rhetorical, surely. Her manual weaving loom, refashioned into an electronic musical instrument, adorned with Luddite

Last night at Verdurin with Victoria Comstock-Kershaw, Thomas Peermohamed Lambert, Noah Perez, Ester Freider, Daniel Neil, and Rose Lyddon.

Last night at Verdurin with Victoria Comstock-Kershaw, Thomas Peermohamed Lambert, Noah Perez, Ester Freider, Daniel Neil, and Rose Lyddon.

notes and notices: Tacita Dean: Black, Green, Green and White at Frith Street Gallery ★☆☆☆☆ Phoning it in makes little sense in the age of the WhatsApp message, and film studies lost to video a long time ago. Dean was once good at this transition. This two-segment exhibition – consisting of i

notes and notices: Victor Man: The Absence That We Are at David Zwirner ★★★☆☆ To say that Man is preoccupied with death is to make a poor joke. What the artist and the gallery punter share, however, is a profound fear of an unknowable reality. Man, the painter, spent decades coming closer than

Writer and co-editor of The Toe Rag magazine Noah Perez will read in Tomorrow's Recitations at Verdurin. buff.ly/FTR7OBG

Writer and Mme Verdurin's protégé Daniel Neill will read from his forthcoming novel "As Trees Walking" in Thursday's Recitations. Last tickets at buff.ly/FTR7OBG

On the shelves at Verdurin: Shibboleth by Thomas Peermohamed Lambert. A darkly comic tale that brings the satirical English campus novel into the divided, multicultural, hyperactive present day. Thomas will read in Recitations this Thursday - only a couple of tickets left! buff.ly/T8J3tsL

notes and notices: Maso Nakahara: Floating Through Time at Pippy Houldsworth ★★★★☆ Houldsworth’s programme doesn’t get the recognition it may deserve, perhaps because so much of it looks ‘outsider’ as a matter of branding. Nakahara’s mix of studied naïveté and accidental surrealism is a case

The "creative academic" Esther Frieder will read her poem "Emperors Are Just Creative Directors Born Too Early" in Thursday's Recitations at Verdurin. Last tickets at buff.ly/FTR7OBG

On doormats today and on newsstands soon, the October issue of The Critic magazine - with my review of Hilary Lloyd's homage to Dennis Potter at Studio Voltaire.

Victoria Comstock-Kershaw - editor of Fetch and, we understand, Rothko's own girlfriend - will read her new story "White Sauce" on art history, civil war, and... cookery in Thursday's Recitations at Verdurin. Last tickets at buff.ly/FTR7OBG

notes and notices: Cynthia Hawkins: Maps Necessary for a Walk in 4D: Chapter 4 at Hollybush Gardens ★★★☆☆ Context is everything, as a judge once proclaimed. That context might need contexts, too, and Hawkins says her canvases throw back to some others, which, in turn, root their ideas in an event

notes and notices: Grant Falardeau, Rimantė Mikulovičiūtė, Benjamin Sasserson, Bu Shi, Dylan Williams: A light here required a shadow at Maximilian William ★★★☆☆ If the conceit of this show is that darkness reveals, then its obscure palette is unevenly mixed. Mikulovičiūtė’s nostalgias, measured

Advance reading copies have arrived and boy do they look hot. Inversion: Gay Life After the Homosexual With Blake Smith, Roger Lancaster, David Moulton, Stephen Adubato, Amir Naaman, Ran Heilbrunn, Pierre d’Alancaisez, Travis Jeppesen, Oliver Davis, Yotam Feldman, Marcas Lancaster.

I spoke with Kate Sinha and Stefan Ruitenbeek of KIRAC about their proposal for a form of ennobling portraiture, an art that would give rise to a new covenant between the classes. buff.ly/pDnwg8h

Handbags at dusk.

Coming up at Verdurin: Recitations Two Autumn is the time for preparations. Gamey, pungent, spiced, and pickled; sample some of the best writing in season.

My review of Connecting the Thin Black Lines at the ICA - an important historical revelation that unsettles claims of many leading artists - from the summer issue of The Critic is now online. And you have until Sunday to see the show. thecritic.co.uk/a-shows-warn...

Next Saturday: PAPER TIGERS, a symposium on the imaginary of China. For the West, China is a cultural and political entity made up entirely of our projections. How can we think about it beyond the materiality in which it steeps us? With David McGrogan, Lee Jones, Daniel James. 🎟️ buff.ly/2LdmY6S

Which way, modern critic? I checked out the "Art Tragedy Index" in the hope that it might reveal some technocratic trace of a longing for the profound in art, only to find that the opposite desire to prevent artists suffering motivated it.

This Thursday at Verdurin: Downtown with Glenn Belverio In the 1990s, Glennda Orgasm (Belverio) documented the cultural clashes which animated New York City in a series of TV shows made with co-hosts that included Camille Paglia, Can the spirit of Downtown be reanimated today? 🎟️ buff.ly/AgNXOT2

Announcing: INVERSION, Gay Life After the Homosexual Out 12 November. Pre-order now: buff.ly/cYWH4jK With Blake Smith, Roger Lancaster, David Moulton, Stephen Adubato, Amir Naaman, Ran Heilbrunn, Pierre d’Alancaisez, Travis Jeppesen, Oliver Davis, Yotam Feldman, Marcas Lancaster.

Lament the crisis of homosexuality (pictured, 10% off) — or stay tuned for book announcement on Monday.

Coming up at Verdurin: Downtown with Glenn Belverio In the 1990s, the drag queen Glennda Orgasm documented the cultural clashes of New York in a series of TV shows with co-hosts that included Camille Paglia. Can the spirit of Downtown be animated again today? 📅 4 September, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/AgNXOT2

Coming up at Verdurin: Downtown with Glenn Belverio. In the early 1990s, the drag queen Glennda Orgasm (Belverio) documented the cultural clashes which animated New York City in a series of public access TV shows. Can the spirit of Downtown be reanimated today?

Nina Power's Zeitgeist - a philosophy of history course - returns this autumn by popular demand. How do humanity’s great abstractions function over time? This course on the philosophy of history considers the subject in chaos, stasis, progress, and providence. Info: buff.ly/Et74bQS

Coming up at Verdurin: Paper Tigers, a symposium on the imaginary of China. With David McGrogan, Lee Jones, and Daniel James. For the West, China is a cultural and political entity made up entirely of our projections. How can we think about it besides the materiality in which it steeps us?

What if avant-garde artists are master-planners of capital, as Henri Saint-Simon suggested in 1825 when he coined the term, and not its opponents (as they claim), or merely conformists (as it often appears)? For Athenaeum Review, I wrote about artists leading capital to new pastures. ⬇️

Coming up at Verdurin: Downtown with Glenn Belverio. In the early 1990s, the drag queen Glennda Orgasm (Glenn Belverio) documented the cultural clashes which animated New York City in a series of television programmes Glennda and Friends. /

Tonight at Verdurin: Stop All the Clocks with Noah Kumin. Why does it take rapture to reveal the capacities of the systems we design to shield us from loss? Noah Kumin’s new novel is a rare literary thriller in which the suspect of the whodunnit isn’t a person but life itself. 🎟️ buff.ly/ocGYfsF

Verdurin website refresh: you can now find our courses more easily and - finally - get to our online store! verdur.in

Just announced dates for the autumn edition of Nina Power's Zeitgeist course on the philosophy of history. Join us in person at four fortnightly seminars starting 28 October. buff.ly/6v1gklC

The cover of the book I'm working on with Amir Naaman and ten other incredible writers will be dropping soon. For now, I'll let you guess its title.

Last night at Verdurin: Recitations with Olive Parker, Sophie Barshall, Jane Cooper, Alexander Raubo, and MC Rose Lyddon.

Excited about Recitations launching at Verdurin tomorrow. New writing by Olive Parker, Sophie Barshall, Jane Cooper, Alexander Raubo. Organised with Rose Lyddon. buff.ly/PJl2vzd (long sold out, alas)

These idiotic reports seem to be coming every day now. Why would we want to keep anyone (diverse or otherwise) in poorly paid jobs that they (as this suggests) are no longer interested in? Isn’t it the oversupply of labour (gasp) that’s allowing for the conditions to be so terrible?

On doormats and newsstands today, the summer double issue of The Critic. My column is about Connecting Thin Black Lines at the ICA - an opportunity to correct the historical record sadly missed.

Coming up at Verdurin: Stop All the Clocks with Noah Kumin. Noah Kumin is a novelist and founder of Mars Review of Books. 📅 7 August, 7pm 📍 Verdurin, Hoxton 🎟️ £10 at buff.ly/UAu3e94

On the shelves at Verdurin: Nakajima Says and Other Stories by Chōkōdō Shujin 10 tales of love, war and haunting, suspended between the final decades of Imperial Japan and a ghostly modernity, including the play Blossoms of Iwo Jima, a dialogue between three soldiers facing death at the end of WWII.

Yet again, no economist familiar with the relationship between the supply of labour, the demand for it, and wages was available to shed light on the findings.

Coming up at Verdurin: Module Synthesis, an afternoon of summer sounds. Module Synthesis is a contemplative space where atmosphere, texture, and tone take precedence over rhythm and spectacle. 📅 10 August, 2-6pm 🎟️ £10 at verdur.in/event/module...

Last night at Verdurin, launching Philip Cunliffe's The National Interest. @thephilippics.bsky.social @politybooks.bsky.social

The fastest growing sector of the UK economy, you say?

Launching this important text by Philip Cunliffe at Verdurin on Wednesday. verdur.in/store/the-na...

notes and notices: Dan Guthrie: Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure at Chisenhale ★★☆☆☆ The problem for a culture built on iconoclasm is that eventually, it will need to create images of its own. Guthrie is yet to consider this because his image war is still virtual. The subject of his static video

Working on something exciting for September: Paper Tigers, a symposium on the imaginary of China. Save the date (or get the ticket!) now. buff.ly/lnakih6

Verdurin pioneering a new gallery paradigm, yet again.

We're edging into the post-work world. It's €325 a week. Ireland extends its artist UBI scheme and and plans a "successor" programme.