Minor Compositions

Minor Compositions Podcast Season 1 Episode 7 Feminism, Punk and the Avant-Garde

For this episode we have a discussion with Becky Binns about her recently released book Gee Vaucher: Beyond punk, feminism and the avant-garde. We cover a a range off topics including Gee’s work in relationship with punk and artistic countercultures, as well as the changing historiography of punk and feminism. Does art produced in collective projects or by artists not seeking personal notoriety get lost within the historical narrative? Have the conditions for the production of autonomous art and life vanished, and how we might collectively create them again?

Opening / Outro song: “The Mystic Trumpeter” by EXIT (Recorded at the International Carnival of Experimental Sound, 1972)

Gee Vaucher: Beyond punk, feminism and the avant-garde
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526147912/

Minor Compositions Podcast Season 1 Episode 5 Squatting, Art, and Gentrification 

For this episode we have a discussion with Clarrie Pope and Alan W Moore around squatting, art, and gentrification, as well as a range of related topics. The idea is to explore these topics, but coming from different angles, for instance how writing a graphic novel about squatting is different from a personal account or political or academic writing on the same topic. How do these different modes of writing affect the stories that we tell, and how we can communicate with different kinds of people?

Welcome Home was written by sisters Clarrie and Blanche Pope, and is inspired by their experience in squatting and housing struggles, as well Blanche’s time spent working in care homes. They want to give readers insight into the class, race and gender politics involved in both through a humorous look at the way in which these issues affect the minutiae of people's lives.

Alan W. Moore worked as a critic, artist and organizer in NYC for 30 years. He worked with the artists’ group Colab, and co-directed ABC No Rio and the MWF Video Club. He took a PhD in Art History from CUNY in 2000, and published Art Gangs with Autonomedia in 2011. He began to study squatting in Europe in 2009, publishing the zine House Magic (2009-16). He co-edited Making Room: Cultural Production in Occupied Spaces (Other Forms/JoAAP), and wrote Occupation Culture (Autonomedia), both in 2015. In 2022 he published Art Worker, a memoir (JoAAP). He lives in Madrid, and blogs at "Occupations & Properties" and "Art Gangs.”

Opening / Outro song: “Bello e impossibile” by Gianna Nannini

Welcome Home by Clarrie & Blanche Pope: https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=1047
Occupation Culture: Art & Squatting in the City from Below by Alan W. Moore: https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=684

Temporary Autonomous Art (October 2021): https://www.taaexhibitions.org/

Minor Compositions Podcast Season 1 Episode 4 The Weight of the Printed Word

In this episode we have a conversation with Steve Wright, about his book The Weight of the Printed Word: Text, Context and Militancy in Operaismo. In it we discuss the role of print production and document work in the history of Italian operaismo and autonomist Marxism. What role did the production of various forms of print material play in the emergence of these politics, and how did they change and develop along with how the movements themselves evolved?

Steve Wright is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University. He has written widely on operaismo, including Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism (2002).

Opening / outro music: The Potere Operaio Anthem, as sung by Oreste Scalzone and Comrades

Minor Compositions Podcast Season 1 Episode 3 Surrealism and the War on Work

In this episode we have a conversation with Abigail Susik, about her book Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work. We cover a range of topics including the centrality of work refusal to the history of Surrealism, automatist practices and aesthetic sabotage, the class composition of labor that influenced the beginning of Surrealism, why relationships with Communist Parties are ‘complicated,’ and why sewing machines are sexually dangerous.

Abigail Susik is an art historian who writes about surrealism, work, technology, and protest cultures. Her books include Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (2021) and the co-edited volumes: Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (2022); Surrealism and Film After 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries (2021).

Opening / outro music: Gid Tanner - Work Don’t Bother Me (1930), from the collection Hard Time, Good Time & End Time Music : 1923-1936, Cargo Records, 2012

Minor Compositions Podcast Season 1 Episode 2

For this episode, as something of a preview to the upcoming publication of Paolo Sollier’s book Kicks, Spits, and Headers. The Autobiographical Reflections of an Accidental Footballer we have a conversation with Gabriel Kuhn about the relationship between radical politics and sports, particularly focusing on his book Soccer Vs. the State: Tackling Football and Radical Politics. Topics covered include the evolving role and visibility of politics in sports, a range of community run and politically oriented clubs, and speculations about which football club Deleuze supported (Liverpool, obviously).

Gabriel Kuhn is a former semi-professional soccer player from Austria who today lives in Sweden as an author, translator, and union organizer. He founded the DIY publishing outfit Alpine Anarchist Productions in the year 2000, has published numerous books with PM Press, and blogs at LeftTwoThree.

Alpine Anarchist Productions: https://www.alpineanarchist.org
Gabriel Kuhn at PM Press: https://blog.pmpress.org/authors-artists-comrades/gabriel-kuhn/
LeftTwoThree: https://lefttwothree.org

Intro / outro music: “Paolo Sollier” by Rabat from “Resta Ribelle”
https://nabatofficial.bandcamp.com/album/resta-ribelle

Minor Compositions Podcast Season 1 Episode 1: Communizing Publishing

This first episode of the Minor Compositions podcast is a discussion with Nick Thoburn about experimental publishing and communizing media.

Nick Thoburn is Reader in Sociology at the University of Manchester. He writes about publishing, political theory, social movements, and architecture, and is author of "Anti-Book: On the Art and Politics of Radical Publishing" (2016) and "Deleuze, Marx and Politics" (2003).

Nick Thoburn's ideas about political publishing are developed further in the following texts, freely available online:

'Anti-Book: On the Art and Politics of Radical Publishing'
https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/anti-book

'Twitter, Book, Riot: Post-Digital Publishing against Race'
https://researchdestroy.com/Thoburn_TwitterBookRiot.pdf

'A Crisis of Politics and a Crisis of Media Form' - an interview about anti-book publishing
https://bangkokartbookfair.info/co-op/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/OA_White-Fungus_A-CRISIS-OF-POLITICS-AND-A-CRISIS-OF-MEDIA-FORM_-1.pdf