Launch of e-flux journal issue #131

This episode was recorded live during the launch of e-flux journal issue #131 on December 7, 2022. The evening was introduced and moderated by the journal editors, and featured authors Martin Guinard, Sabu Kohso, Matt Peterson, Leon Dische Becker, and Cosmo Bjorkenheim.

Martin Guinard expands on his “Homage to Bruno Latour” with a message on diplomacy between different worlds that are no longer commoning together. In connection to Dische Becker and Bjorkenheim's later conversation, Guinard also touches on Latour's (non-)relationship to science fiction. 

Sabu Kohso and Matt Peterson discuss their conversation “The Catastrophe Revealed: On Radiation and Revolution,” which traces deep, interconnected fault lines between the ongoing aftermaths of the Fukushima disaster and the Covid pandemic, as well as the imperial and also liberatory history of activist movements in Tokyo, New York, and all places where people rise up against a disintegrating world. 

Leon Dische Becker and Cosmo Bjorkenheim discuss their essay “A Cursed Franchise: Reliving Colonial Nightmares Through Endless Sci-fi Remakes,” which, among other things, recommends against Hollywood directors mounting a fourth remake of H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, arguing that its curses and racist colonial critiques are better left in the past.

e-flux journal is a monthly art publication featuring writings by some of the most engaged artists and thinkers working today. Its Issue #131 (November 2022) features contributions by Mi You, Sabu Kohso, Matt Peterson, Martin Guinard, Leon Dische Becker, Cosmo Bjorkenheim, Nicola Perugini, Tommaso Fiscaletti, Su Wei, Pelin Tan, Olga Olina, Hallie Ayres, and Anton Vidokle. Read or download the issue here.

Martin Guinard has been a curator at LUMA Arles since 2021. Before this, he worked on several interdisciplinary projects dealing with ecological mutation in close collaboration with Bruno Latour. He was a curator of the 2020 Taipei Biennial, titled “You and I Don't Live on the Same Planet,” as well as a guest-editor of the e-flux journal issue of the same name. 

Sabu Kohso is a political and social critic, translator, and a long-time activist in the global and anti-capitalist struggle. He has published several books on urban space and struggle in Japan, and has translated books by Kojin Karatani and David Graeber. His most recent book is Radiation and Revolution (Duke University Press, 2020).

Matt Peterson is an organizer at Woodbine, an experimental space in New York City. He codirected the film Spaces of Exception (2018), and coedited the books In the Name of the People (2018) and The Mohawk Warrior Society (forthcoming 2022).

Leon Dische Becker is a writer, editor, and translator (Ger-to-Eng) from Berlin currently living between Los Angeles and New York City. He is trying to write more again. 

Cosmo Bjorkenheim is a filmmaker and writer who lives in New York City. His work has been screened at Anthology Film Archives, Maysles Documentary Center, and the Museum of the Moving Image. He is a contributing editor at Screen Slate.