Minor Compositions

Minor Compositions Podcast Season 1 Episode 33 Dismantling the Master’s Clock In this episode, we speak with Rasheedah Phillips about her groundbreaking book Dismantling the Master’s Clock: On Race, Space, and Time . Drawing from Black Quantum Futurism, Phillips challenges dominant, Western notions of time – showing how they have been shaped by colonialism, capitalism, and racial oppression. Why d...

Minor Compositions Podcast Season 1 Episode 32 States of Divergence For this episode we have a discussion with writer and theorist Sven Lütticken, as we delve into his new book States of Divergence . In it we will explore the book’s core themes: the lived experience of accelerating catastrophe, and the emergence of divergent, resistant practices across art, politics, and everyday life. More on the...

Minor Compositions Season 1 Episode 31 Take This Refusal and Dance To It This episode is a conversation with Paul Rekret, centered around his book Take This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis (2024). In this discussion we explore the book’s key themes through both discussion and curated music selections that speak to the intersections of labor, leisure, and sound.  Take This Hammer examines how shifts in...

Minor Compositions Season 1 Episode 31 Penny as Producer Penny Rimbaud is best known as a founding member of the anarcho-punk collective Crass, as well as for his work as a poet, writer, and philosopher. But beyond these well-known aspects of his life and practice lies another, less frequently discussed dimension: his role as a record producer. The original idea for this episode of Minor Compositi...

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 29 Surrealism, Bugs Bunny, and the Blues   This episode is a discussion with Paul Buhle, Abigail Susik, and Penelope Rosemont about the newly released book Surrealism, Bugs Bunny, and the Blues: Selected Writings on Popular Culture . This collection brings together legendary Chicago surrealist Franklin Rosemont’s writings on popular culture over a period of more...

E28 Band People with Franz Nicolay  This episode is a recording of a seminar held at the University of Essex with Franz Nicolay on his book Band People . In it Franz Nicolay explores the working and creative lives of musicians. In it, he argues that to talk about the role of a ‘band person’ is not only to talk about art and craft but also to develop a critique of the value placed on fame and a cel...

For this episode we have a discussion of the book  Peter Brötzmann: Free-Jazz, Revolution and the Politics of Improvisation with its author Daniel Spicer and long time comrade and fellow radical theorist / free jazz musician Richard Gilman-Opalsky. In it we discuss the countercultural and artistic milieus that shape Brötzmann as an artist, the importance of his work as an organizer and catalyst, a...

For this episode we talk with Brixton-based textile artist Scorpio about his life and work. Last summer a quest to learn more about the 1990s militant queer art collective Homocult led us to visiting “Iconic Queer,” an exhibition of Scorpio’s work at the Lambeth Archives. Moved by the power of the work, and sensing there would be interesting stories behind these pieces, which focussed on cycles of...

For this episode, in light of the current sector wide university crisis in the UK, we present the recording of a seminar with Ronald Hartz, David Harvie, and Simon Lilley about their book  Shaping for Mediocrity . In 2021, as part of a programme called Shaping for Excellence, bosses at the University of Leicester made redundant numerous scholars in what was simultaneously an attack on academic fre...

For this episode we have a conversation with Bernard Marszalek and Peter Bloom about Bernard’s new book  Jobs, Jive, & Joy: An Argument for the Utopian Spirit . In it we cover a wide range of topics including tech bros, the place of Bernard’s mum in labor history, and the ongoing quest to have our lives be filled with radical hedonism, collective joy, and non-alienated time. “Utopianism arose...

As part of previewing and preparing for a larger project with Penny Rimbaud, this episode revisits a conversation with Penny from 2017. This was part of the “Stop the City… Revisited” installation which was part of “Discipline the City” exhibition and event series at the Substation in Singapore. It’s an interesting, if somewhat strange conversation, where Pen, as is his wont, answers questions in...

In this episode we chat with Pil and Galia Kollectiv to explore their new book,  Subversive Performance in the Age of Human Capital . Stevphen was originally to take part in the book release event last autumn in London but was unable. So instead we’ve turned that missed event into an excuse for a conversation around Pil and Galia’s work. Topics covered include intersections of performance, labor,...

In this episode of Minor Compositions we delve into the complex intersections of gender, power, and contemporary alt-right and neofascist politics with Jack Bratich and Ewa Majewska. Drawing on Bratich’s  On Microfascism: Gender, Death, and War and Majewska’s Feminist Antifascism: Counterpublics of the Common , the discussion unpacks how gender dynamics are central to the rise of fascist ideologie...

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 20 The Arts of Logistics with Michael Shane Boyle & Elaine W Ho    This episode is a conversation around the new book The Arts of Logistics: Artistic Production in Supply Chain Capitalism by Michael Shane Boyle. For this conversation we are joined by Elaine Ho, who artistic practice explores similar areas to those explored in Shane’s work. Through this conver...

Episode 19 Emergent Assemblages of Relationist Football with Jamie Hamilton  For this episode we talk with Jamie Hamilton, a football coach and tactical writer based at Ayr United in Scotland. Hamilton is best known for coining the idea of relationism in football, which is an approach that emphasizes emergent patterns of play discovered by the players themselves rather than fitting into a set plan...

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 18 Anxiety as Vibration with Ana Minozzo   For this episode we talk with we chat Ana Minozzo about her new book Anxiety as Vibration: A Psychosocial Cartography . What can anxiety do if approach anxiety not simply as a problem to be solved, but also as a potential site of rupture and transformation? And what tools might we find in a rethought version of psychoana...

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 17 Militant Aesthetics with Martin Lang  For this episode we talk with art historian and painter Martin Lang about this book Militant Aesthetics: Art Activism in the 21st Century. How are practices of art activism changing in the current political and media climate? What tensions exist within these forms of political engagement and how can they be productively wo...

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 16 Sports & the Avant-Garde with Przemysław Strożek  For this episode we talk with Przemysław Strożek about the relationship between avant-garde arts and sports in the 1920s and 1930s. We discuss two of his books, one as editor: Sport and the European Avant-Garde (1900–1945); and one as sole author: Picturing the Workers’ Olympics and the Spartakiads: Moderni...

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 15 Class, Disasters, and Mutual Aid with John Preston and Rhiannon Firth For this episode we talk with John Preson and Rhiannon Firth about the relationship between class, disasters, and mutual aid. The conversation is formed mainly around re-visiting their 2020 book “Coronavirus, Class and Mutual Aid in the United Kingdom” but branches off to discussing broader...

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 14: Revolutionary Love & the Deep Commons with Matt York For this episode we talk with Matt York about his book Love and Revolution: A politics for the Deep Commons “Based on award-winning research, Love and Revolution brings classical and contemporary anarchist thought into a mutually beneficial dialogue with a global cross-section of ecological, anti-capita...

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 13: Up Against the Real with Nadja Millner-Larsen For this episode we talk with Nadja Millner-Larsen about her book Up Against the Real Black Mask from Art to Action. “With Up Against the Real, Nadja Millner-Larsen offers the first comprehensive study of the group Black Mask and its acrimonious relationship to the New York art world of the 1960s. Cited as pioneer...

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 12: The Subhumans & Punk Historiography with Ian Glasper For this episode we talk with Ian Glasper about his book Silence Is No Reaction: Forty Years of Subhumans . In the conversation we cover broader issues of ‘punk historiography’ and documenting more marginal musical, artistic, and political milieus that one is a part of (rather than falling on or relying...

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 11: Italian Operaismo with Gigi Roggero This episode of the Minor Compositions podcast is recorded as part of the Ultradependent Public School exhibition at BAK (https://www.bakonline.org/program-item/ultradependent-public-school-2/) For this episode we are talking with Gigi Roggero about his book Italian Operaismo: Genealogy, History, Method. In this conversatio...

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 10: Autonomia and Art with Jacopo Galimberti https://fireflyfrequencies.org/podcasts/minor-compositions This episode is a discussion with Jacopo Galimberi about this book Images of Class: Operaismo, Autonomia and the Visual Arts (1962–1988) “During the 1960s and 1970s, Workerism and Autonomia were prominent Marxist currents. However, it is rarely acknowledged tha...

Minor Compositions Podcast Season 1 Episode 9 Compound Lyricism This episode intersperses a performance by experimental Indonesian doom folk metal band Senyawa (recorded in Folkestone in April 2022) with a discussion with their vocalist and lyricist Rully Shabara. The interview covers topics including his approach to writing lyrics, use of allegory and imagery, and how this has changed over Senyaw...