Event overview
Futures & Fictions: Visual Cultures Public Programme Autumn 2015
Mark Fisher and Judy Thorne explore the idea of luxury communism as a slogan for a more libidinal left.
Luxury communism is a gesture out of the fug of the present and towards a utopian horizon. Luxury communism says that we are communists because we are in love with beauty and joy. We are communists because we insist on a world of universal abundance. All the things which capitalism promises can be everyone's, and more - communist luxury means art for all. It means social housing with stained glass windows. It means public swimming baths with frescoed ceilings. It means the abolition of second class. It means the reduction towards zero of alienated work. It means the delinking of work from the wage, and the queer decoupling of sex from procreation. It means sensuousness, sensitivity, luxuriation. It means nothing is too good for the working class. Luxury communism gestures at utopia and says: this is ours, now, let's have it.
Chair: Henriette Gunkel
Judy Thorne is an underemployed researcher living in Sheffield, interested in the anthropology of desire and the future. She enjoys writing, drawing, having strong opinions about cities, and going round asking people what they want the world to be like in the future. She's got an MA in anthropology and is currently applying for funding for a PhD project on utopianism in Greece.
Futures and Fictions explores the political imaginary, the inventing and imaging of alternate narratives and image-worlds that might be pitched against the impasses of the present. The series ranges from future-oriented science fictions and alternative space-time plots to myths and images generated by marginalized and ‘minor’ communities, queer-feminist strategies of fictioning, and the production of new Afro- and other futurisms.
Series Organisers: Henriette Gunkel, Ayesha Hameed & Simon O’Sullivan
The events are free and no booking is required. All welcome.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 26 Nov 2015 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
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