Verdurin

The peak of globalization is behind us, and not merely due to the Trump administration’s trade and foreign policies. With states being forced anew to earn their position in the international order, a new debate about the meaning of their national interest is urgently needed. The concept of ‘national interest’, however, is conspicuous from public life by its absence. All too often, the question is...

This bonus episode is the audience conversation at ⁠Shakespeare, Elites, Power⁠ with Neema Parvini and Oliver Bennett. It was recorded at Verdurin in March 2026. Get a copy of ⁠ The Populist Delusion ⁠ and ⁠ Applied Elite Theory ⁠ . Join our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ . Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ , ⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠ , ⁠⁠⁠BSky⁠⁠⁠ , ⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠ , and ⁠⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠⁠ .

Shakespeare weighs heavily on the British political imagination. The Shakespearean ‘living tradition’ has seen his plays adapted to contradictory ideas and adopted by warring ideological factions. The playwright is as often construed as a proto-liberal as his plays are taken to be the foundation of an English concern with the social order.  Neema Parvini , also known as Academic Agent, has gained...

The idea of progress is one of the animating concepts of Western civilisation. It permeates our understanding of history and shapes the way we imagine the future. From Marxism and neoliberalism to today’s identity politics, progress offers a framework of knowledge and confidence: an assurance that things can get better and a justification for our desires. What determines whether the ideas of progr...

The anxieties around the decline of reading and literacy paradoxically give rise to outsized fantasies of the power of reading. As humanists feel increasingly under threat in the institutions, they attribute to reading (particularly the reading of fiction) miraculous and healing powers. In this, the final part of Out of Print , Edmund King reflects on bibliotherapy and some of the symposium's...

Is the loss of value of literacy as symptomatic of a devaluing of human minds, experience, and relations. This devaluing is expressed in the dominant culture of technicist materialism.  Does the devaluing of literacy coincide with a devaluing of human minds, experience, and relations, a devaluing expressed in the dominant culture of technicist materialism? Nick Hostettler explores how the personal...

What if the problem of literacy is not its decline, but rather our hyper-literate state? The written word has become a bulwark against experience, with the reading of social media posts or Substack essays is at best a distraction. In this, the third part of Out of Print , Kit Wilson explores the confusion of the ‘map’ with the ‘territory’ that occludes access to an understanding of things outside...

Is writing under threat from AI? Is reading a lost art? Did the invention of writing itself  irrevocably change human nature? And are we entirely proscribed by language? Concerns like these have a long history, and how we address them is not without consequences.  ⁠Out of Print⁠ was held at Verdurin in June 2026. The symposium was organised with Edmund King. In this second presentation of the even...

Is writing under threat from AI? Is reading a lost art? Did the invention of writing itself  irrevocably change human nature? And are we entirely proscribed by language? Concerns like these have a long history, and how we address them is not without consequences.  Out of Print was held at Verdurin in June 2026. The symposium was organised with Edmund King. In the first part of the event, Scholar D...

Welcome back, it’s been a while since we posted anything in this channel. If you’re hearing this in September 2026, this is likely because you once listened to my book interviews.  In 2024, I founded Verdurin in London. Verdurin is a cultural project, which offers everything you need to survive the cultural apocalypse. Our events, courses, exhibitions, and publications animate urgent and often cha...

Questions like “What does this mean?” are central to our encounters with art. “How are these signs connected?” or “how do all symbols fit into an unstated scheme?” are the foundational concerns of aesthetics. Yet, when the same concerns crop up regularly in almost any other part of life, we give a clinical, pathological name: paranoia. These questions were the makings of ⁠Paranoia⁠ , a symposium h...

Questions like “What does this mean?” are central to our encounters with art. “How are these signs connected?” or “how do all symbols fit into an unstated scheme?” are the foundational concerns of aesthetics. Yet, when the same concerns crop up regularly in almost any other part of life, we give a clinical, pathological name: paranoia. These questions were the makings of ⁠Paranoia⁠ , a symposium h...

Questions like “What does this mean?” are central to our encounters with art. “How are these signs connected?” or “how do all symbols fit into an unstated scheme?” are the foundational concerns of aesthetics. Yet, when the same concerns crop up regularly in almost any other part of life, we give a clinical, pathological name: paranoia. These questions were the makings of Paranoia , a symposium hel...

Liberal democracies don’t age gracefully. Established systems of governance like those of the UK and the US which once served as blueprints are today experiencing a profound crisis of legitimacy. In Britain, a landslide general election result was quickly followed by a catastrophic tumble in approval ratings. In the US presidential campaign, meanwhile, voters were told that democracy itself was on...

Not so long ago, comedy and laughter were a shared experience of relief, as Freud famously argued. At their best, ribbing, roasting, piss-taking and insulting were the foundation of a kind of universal culture from which friendship, camaraderie and solidarity could emerge. Now, comedy is characterized by edgy humour and misplaced jokes that provoke personal and social anxiety, causing divisive cul...

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 o...

Who do you turn to at the brink of the apocalypse? What might help us to mitigate the financial, commercial, political, social, and cultural collapse for which we may be heading?  Museums and Societal Collapse  proposes an unlikely hero in this narrative. Robert Janes’ text explores the implications of societal collapse from a multidisciplinary perspective and considers the potential museums have...

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...

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 ea...

Then let the story really begin in 1968, though it has little to do with May. By chance it opens in January of that year, and it really concerns me rather than the world of political events, though these are always on my mind, as they were always on my mind.  Future Imperfect , Adrian Rifkin’s short Bildungsroman sets beside each other the fault lines of events and moments recalled without a diary...

On an afternoon in January 1865, a roaring fire swept through the Smithsonian Institution. Dazed soldiers and worried citizens could only watch as the flames engulfed the museum’s castle. Rare objects and valuable paintings were destroyed. The flames at the Smithsonian were not the first—and certainly would not be the last— disaster to upend a museum in the United States. Beset by challenges rangi...

On the centenary of the fascist party's ascent to power in Italy,  Curating Fascism  examines the ways in which exhibitions organised after the fall of Mussolini's regime to the present day have shaped collective memory, historical narratives, and political discourse around the Italian  ventennio . It charts how shows on fascism have evolved since the postwar period in Italy, explores repr...

In  Uncommon Sense , Craig Leonard argues for the contemporary relevance of the aesthetic theory of Herbert Marcuse, an original member of the Frankfurt School and icon of the New Left, while also acknowledging his philosophical limits. This account reinvigorates Marcuse for contemporary readers, putting his aesthetic theory into dialogue with anti-capitalist activism. Craig Leonard speaks to Pier...

NFT, BTC, DAO, ETH, WAGMI, HODL. It would have been hard to avoid these acronyms only a year ago. The hype around cryptocurrencies and blockchain art was almost as annoying as the glee with which crypto sceptics welcomed the sudden onset of the crypto winter. But for all the popularity of  Bored Apes  and Ponzi scheme stories, there seems to have been little serious engagement with the philosophic...

Visual Culture and the Forensic bridges practices conventionally understood as forensic, such as crime scene investigation, and the broader field of activity which the forensic now designates, for example, in performance and installation art, or photography. David Houston Jones speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the evidentiary and forensic burden of art and photography, the artifice of crim...