In addition to being a replay of episode 138, from May of 2021, art writer Ben Davis also provides an update on what he thinks about art and activism today, in conjunction with his new book, 'Culture Collapse.'

In this episode, Ben talks about:

His time in Australia at the (x) conference, and his meetings with artist Ben Quilty (also a social activist work); art and activism, and art & politics; the mutually incompatible art tribes that exist among the different 'art worlds;' how the fact that all the different complaints from various factions of the art world(s) can all be true at once, and how disorienting that can be (for Ben); how outside of the cities where there's a market, the conversation is almost always about social aesthetics (what Ben calls "social practice") instead, and how that's where government arts support tends to gravitate; how some of the most interesting art – art that's 'underground and weird' - is being made outside of the art world bubble, among them Fee Plumley, an artist based in Adelaide; sections from his book "9.5 Theses on Art and Class" -- the title and also a specific chapter of his book which was originally written as a pamphlet and intervention of an art show in NY on art and class – including trickle-down theories of both economics and art; and art education, and particularly what for Ben was a profoundly moving article: A Eulogy for Hope: The Silent Murder of Gallery 37 ; what explains the fact that grad schools are made up of 2/3 women, but galleries represent 1/3 women…what happened in between?; what the mechanisms are that make up the art world/how it works; his piece "Do you have to be rich to make it as an artist?"; how the conversation about the art market is a complete dead end; how cities with much smaller art markets, but much cheaper housing, are better for artists; and how without the writing, without the intellectual circulation around the production of art, art's just an overpriced piece of decoration.