Sometime scientist, financial services professional. Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Mike Watson is a theorist, critic and curator who is principally focused on the relationship between culture, new media and politics. Mike Watson speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about Mark Fisher’s legacy in critical online spaces, the democracy of memes and their aesthetic warfare, the Acid Left, and how the Frankfurt School thinkers foreshadowed our current moment. One of Fisher’s insights, widely taken up by the online memesphere, was that capitalism breeds depression. As more people have access to the means for theoretical and critical engagement online, he urges the online left to build a real-life cultural and political movement. Taking in the phenomena of QAnon, twitch streaming, and memes, Watson argues that the dichotomy between culture and political praxis is a false one. In examining their thoughts and drawing parallels with Fisher’s Capitalist Realism, Watson aims to render the Frankfurt School as an incisive theoretical toolbox for the post-Covid digital age. In the aftermath, The Memeing of Mark Fisher (Zero Books, 2021) revisits the Frankfurt School theorists who worked in the shadow of World War Two, during the rise of the culture industry. Mike Watson picks up Fisher’s prognosis when the locked-down pandemic world is mired in a depression that is economic and psychological, and no doubt exacerbated by the transfer of culture and life online. One of Fisher’s insights, widely taken up by the online memesphere, was that capitalism breeds depression. In September 2021, he will publish his third book with ZerO Books, The Memeing of Mark Fisher: How the Frankfurt School Foresaw Capitalist Realism and What to Do About It.Through his blog K-Punk, Mark Fisher become one of the cult figures of cultural theory after the economic crash of 2008. He has written for Art Review, Artforum, Frieze, Hyperallergic and Radical Philosophy, and has curated events at the 55th and 56th Venice Biennale, and Manifesta 12, in Palermo. Mike Watson is a theorist, critic and curator who is principally focused on the relation between culture, new media and politics. Irina Mutt and Mike Watson were invited to follow the annual Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities in September 2021 and engage with the programme’s exhibitions, events and publications. 'Spring 2020 to 2021 was the year that did not take place. The Frankfurt School meets Fisher in this critique of capitalism incorporating memes, mental illness and psychedelia into a proposed counterculture. One of two texts which were commissioned and published in the context of Frame’s public programme Rehearsing Hospitalities (2019-2023) to simultaneously offer a critical review of the programme and provide a platform for developing new art writing. The Memeing of Mark Fisher, Mike Watson - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. Rehearsing Hospitalities Staying in the Liminal Space Between Politics and Art: On Rehearsing Hospitalities

The memeing of mark fisher