Disintegrator

Simon Denny, a contemporary artist known for exploring tech's political economy, joins Hito Steyerl, a renowned artist and writer, to dissect the concept of EXO capitalism. They discuss the disconnect between artistic labor and market value, and how NFTs have revolutionized art circulation and production. The duo debates the implications of pricing as a medium and the idea of 'becoming boring' as resistance to capitalism. Their thought-provoking insights delve into the relationship between art, algorithms, and the shifting dynamics of value in contemporary culture.

A transmission from Becoming Press' Πάμε Βενετία! conference in Venice this past September.Contributions in order from:Palais SinclaireLucas Ferraço NassifAlessandro SbordoniEzili-i SabbahMaks ValenčičRheaDocumented by Polymnia

This lively conversation features Sylvia Eckermann, an innovative media artist from Vienna, and Gerald Nestler, an artist and theorist with insights from finance. They discuss the concept of ‘HOTHOUSE,’ exploring how artists can advocate for democracy amidst crises like climate change. They redefine demonstration as collaborative action, highlight the intertwining of art with civic engagement, and address the idea of the 'derivative condition'—a reflection on how financial turbulence affects societal futures. Their insights into resistance and adaptability ignite a thought-provoking dialogue.

Leif Weatherby, an NYU associate professor and author of *Language Machines*, dives into the exciting intersection of AI and language. He explores how large language models (LLMs) redefine traditional structuralist theories and argue for cultural AI's potential. Leif discusses the poetic functions of language in AI, the ideological implications behind data pretraining, and the uncanny outputs generated by LLMs. He critiques remainder humanism and champions a humanism that acknowledges complexity, highlighting the need for creative adaptation in our automated future.

In this engaging discussion, Mohammad Salemy, organizer of the New Centre for Research and Practice, dives into the complexities of contemporary politics and identity. He critiques Western left responses to the Israel-Palestine conflict through a multi-layered political framework. Salemy explores identity as a fluid concept shaped by context, and advocates for viewing generative AI as a tool to facilitate creativity, not replace it. His charisma and insight into pedagogy make this conversation both thought-provoking and relevant.

We’re joined by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney — co-conspirators of The Undercommons — to think with us about AI, study, and brutality, and the long histories that place these concepts into relation. In a lot of ways neither Moten nor Harney require an introduction, they are the sources of major touchstone references made throughout this podcast — from last week’s guest Ramon Amaro to one of our first guests, Luciana Parisi, and plenty of places in between.  The episode starts with a conversation about AI, but it quickly becomes a conversation about change, the question of the necessity of change or even organization, and imposition (that is, the brutal, external application of force against situations that already contain within themselves the lived possibility of alternative futures). Some important references among many from the episode: Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Minor Compositions, 2013).Matteo Pasquinelli, The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence (Verso, 2023).Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument” (2003).Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Duke UP, 2016).Denise Ferreira da Silva, Unpayable Debt (Sternberg Press, 2022).Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983; later eds. 2000/2020).Amiri Baraka, “The Changing Same (R&B and New Black Music),” in Black Music (1968).Hua Hsu, “What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?” The New Yorker (June 30, 2025).• • Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think,” The Atlantic (July 1945).

We’re joined by Ramon Amaro, Creative Director of Design Academy Eindhoven — an engineer, philosopher, writer, curator, and altogether critical-force-to-be-reckoned-with on the subject of computation as it intersects with concepts like culture, race, and being. We were drawn to his tour-de-force “The Black Technical Object: On Machine Learning and the Aspiration of Black Being” (2023), which is an absolute banger, re-reading Gilbert Simondon’s technical object through the lens of blackness, race, and racialized technologies. This one is a wild ride, a really deep and incredibly thoughtful episode, and we make an effort to define some initial terms on the podcast — specifically the ‘pre-individuated milieu’ (the space where things or ideas live before they become crystalized into social or racialized relations) and the ‘technical object’ (a way that Simondon helps us think through the autonomies enjoyed by technology, that even though technological objects may be initially bound in some ways to their human partners, they are able to exert influences not just backwards on us, but influences that determine their own design evolution over time). Ramon starts the conversation with a distinction that is critical to the whole episode — that blackness is not a racial category, or moreover, that blackness is distinct from race. Race is something that happens after blackness, that impinges upon blackness as it moves from pre-individuated space and enters into the field of social relations we currently live within. This independence is critical, because it invites alternatives (and suggests, we think very rightly, that this field of social relations we currently live within, while historically situated in imperial or colonial violence, is arbitrary and exchangeable with any other possibility). A few works that are important to consider here: W.E.B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk — total canonSylvia Wynter’s work is discussed throughout, specifically on the concept of “Man” (particularly Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument).Gilbert Simondon, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects and Two Lessons on Animal and Man — both places to look for autonomy in Simondon’s workFrantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks — implied by discussions of phenomenology/perception under racialization.Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons — no spoilers, but more on this later :)Thanks soooo much to Dr. Amaro for joining us! 

Catherine Malabou, a renowned European philosopher, graces the discussion with her insights on plasticity, bridging neuroscience and modern thought. She explores the impact of AI on education, urging a philosophical approach to understand our evolving identities. Delving into feminine autonomy, she positions the clitoris as a revolutionary symbol against gender binaries. The conversation also tackles prefigurative politics in anarchism, urging for immediate enactment of revolutionary ideals in our tech-driven society.

Charles Mudede & Claire from Becoming Press sit down to discuss Exocapitalism: Economies w/ Absolutely No Limits!Charles Mudede is an author, critic, filmmaker, and thinker whose work is everywhere. Watch Zoo, it's absolutely nuts. We were honored to have him write the prologue to Exocapitalism. You will almost never get a chance to watch a master get to work like this in this interview, absolutely dancing through the entire legacy of Marx with incredible speed and approachability, lobbing grenades and jokes at every turn. He's so incisive and clear-eyed; it's just really refreshing -- and Claire knows exactly how to set him up!Buy the book -- buy the whole catalog. If you haven't bought the book already you're missing out on "the Das Kapital of the 21st century," "the most anticipated book of the year," "the book drop of the century" (your peers' words not mine :p).

We're back to our regularly-scheduled Disintegrator programming! We've been hard at work on our book (buy it, wtf!) but have a number of killer episodes queued up for release.Émile P. Torres is a philosopher of the end times. You'll most likely associate their name (and that of collaborator Timnit Gebru) with developing the acronym TESCREAL, a grab-bag of ideologies that undergird the romance between venture capital and Silicon Valley. We strongly recommend their podcast Dystopia Now! (w/ Kate Willett) and their newest book Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation.The T in TESCREAL is 'transhumanism,' a frequent topic of the pod, which tends to mean an application of technology to human bodies and in such a way that allows humans to transcend human limitations (e.g. speed, efficiency, senses, mortality). From there, the rest of the ideologies follow from a relationship between the human and its 'rationalized' extensibility through technology: E (extropianism), S (singularitarianism), C (cosmism), R (rationalism), EA (effective altriusim), and L (longtermism). Here's a gentle and clean explainer of all of the above. In this episode, we talk extensively about some elements that aren't actively represented in TESCREAL but sit beneath it: accelerationism, extinction-neutrality, and left-adjacent positions with respect to both (e.g. l/acc, xenofeminism, ahumanism -- this episode might pair really nicely with our interview with Patricia MacCormack for this very reason).