Disintegrator

40. Liturgy (w/ Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix)

We're joined by Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, composer, philosopher, and force behind Liturgy, whose concept of transcendental black metal has redrawn the boundaries between underground music and systematic thought. Her work operates in parallel registers: an experimental music practice that stands on its own terms, and a body of theory moving through theology, psychoanalysis, and philosophy.   This episode goes deep into Hunter's provocation that the Byzantine tradition of Christianity (the Eastern lineage that lasted another thousand years after the Latin West began its trajectory toward secularism, science, and industry) might hold resources for navigating the current moment of structural collapse. We discuss the difference between the transcendental (conditions of possibility, historicized horizons, Hegelian self-relating negativity) and the transcendent (a higher realm of intelligibility that is actually, ontically, here), and why critical theory's allergy to the latter might be more ideological than rational.   We also get into Hunter's framework for practice: tetraperichoresis, a fourfold structure involving integration (merging ancient and contemporary materials), coalescence (putting philosophy, music, and drama into positive feedback), irrigation (moving between institutional worlds and smashing them against each other), and catalysis (the messianic wager that everything you do could be hastening the Kingdom). References: * Hunt-Hendrix, Hunter. "Byzantine Accelerationism: Towards a Universal Orthodox Christianity." [https://www.sum.si/journal-articles/byzantine-accelerationism] Šum Journal #22 (2024). * Hunt-Hendrix, Hunter. "Transcendental Black Metal: A Vision of Apocalyptic Humanism." [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57044839b09f95d1f342ce25/t/575201a58a65e24600087b3b/1464992166180/Transcendental+Black+Metal+(BMTS+vol.+1+-+Hideous+Gnosis)+.pdf] Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium I (2010). * Liturgy, Origin of the Alimonies [https://liturgy.bandcamp.com/album/origin-of-the-alimonies-2] (2020) — the cosmogonical opera-album. * Hunter Hunt-Hendrix's Substack [https://litvrgy.substack.com/] — ongoing philosophical writing and the System of Transcendental Qabala. * Katerina Kolozova, Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststructuralist Philosophy [https://cup.columbia.edu/book/cut-of-the-real/9780231166119] (Columbia University Press, 2014). * The Seven Ecumenical Councils of Eastern Christianity, particularly the Seventh Council on icon veneration (787 CE) and John of Damascus's theological defense. * Maximus the Confessor's Ambigua — discussed in relation to eschatology and the idea that "true humanism has never been tried." * Lacan's graph of desire — discussed in relation to masculine/feminine subject positions. * The CCRU and chaos magic traditions — referenced in relation to esoteric practice and Nick Land. * Sergei Bulgakov's Sophiology and the conception of the divine feminine.

39. Dissociation (w/ McKenzie Wark)

We're so so so honored to be joined by McKenzie Wark, the writer, theorist, and unmissable figure in the development of critical thought around information, class, and embodiment. Her work barely needs an introduction, but it has shaped how we think about technology, identity, and shifting relations of power, all while questioning the conventions of theory and public writing itself. Her concept of vectorialism has been extremely important to our own thinking about capitalism. This episode covers a huge range of Wark's evolving project, from her early work on the NetTime listserv and the legendary A Hacker Manifesto (2004), which mapped the shift from industrial capital to the information economy and coined the term vectoralist class, to the decisive personal turn in Reverse Cowgirl (2020), where theory stopped being about something and started being inside it. We talk about what she calls "auto-textual" writing, the body as both subject and medium, and the annihilation of subjectivity through sex, drugs, and dancing. One line from this conversation won't leave us: maybe we're entering an era defined less by an aesthetic of alienation than by an aesthetic of dissociation. If alienation belonged to industrial capitalism, dissociation might be its post-digital heir. Critical (critical) Wark: * Wark, McKenzie. A Hacker Manifesto. Harvard University Press, 2004. * Wark, McKenzie. Gamer Theory. Harvard University Press, 2007. * Wark, McKenzie. Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse?. Verso, 2019. * Wark, McKenzie. Reverse Cowgirl. Semiotext(e), 2020. * Wark, McKenzie. Raving. Duke University Press, 2023. * Wark, McKenzie, and Kathy Acker. I'm Very Into You: Correspondence 1995–1996. Semiotext(e), 2015.

Hito Steyerl & Simon Denny on Exocapitalism

Two of the most important artists of the 21st century help us tease through the implications of our book.

Πάμε Βενετία! (w/ Becoming Press)

A transmission from Becoming Press' Πάμε Βενετία! conference in Venice this past September. Contributions in order from: Palais Sinclaire Lucas Ferraço Nassif Alessandro Sbordoni Ezili-i Sabbah Maks Valenčič Rhea Documented by Polymnia

HOTHOUSE: The Future of Demonstration (w/ Sylvia Eckermann & Gerald Nestler)

Welcome to the first episode of Hothouse, a limited series exploring experimental forms of demonstration, resistance, and civic imagination. Produced in collaboration with Future of Demonstration: HOTHOUSE,a renegade lab for democracy against technocapitalist authoritarianism, this series invites selected guests to expand upon their methods and perspectives. We joined the festival in Vienna this autumn through this podcast collaboration and a workshop during the Exocapitalism Euro book tour. Thanks to Gerald and Sylvia for hosting us, and to everyone who participated with such curiosity and generosity. In this episode, I speak with Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler—artists, theorists, long-time collaborators, and members of Vienna’s Technopolitics collective. Their latest chapter, HOTHOUSE, stages a festival for an overheated world, asking what forms of resistance, solidarity, and imagination can still grow when everything is already too hot. We talk about art as infrastructure rather than spectacle, about Widerständigkeit (resistance as adaptability), the fatigue of critique, and democracy as an experiment under pressure. Our conversation unfolds along the festival’s framing: post-disciplinarity, willful volatility, and the necessity of doing and thinking together, before arriving at the figure of the renegade: the one who disrupts and sabotages to make change possible. Sylvia Eckermann, a pioneer of Austrian media and game art, creates environments where participation itself becomes the question. She emphasizes the artist’s role in reanimating democratic agency and rethinking forms of participation. Gerald Nestler, an artist and former broker turned theorist, operates where finance and aesthetics converge. He coined the term derivative condition to describe speculation as the dominant mode of world-making. We discuss how big tech mirrors hedge funds, and how speculative logics structure contemporary power. Nestler reclaims the figure of the renegade—the infiltrator who learns the system’s logic to subvert it from within—and extends it to artists, activists, and whistleblowers alike. References: * Eckermann, Sylvia & Nestler, Gerald. The Future of Demonstration. (2017–ongoing) https://thefutureofdemonstration.net/ [https://thefutureofdemonstration.net/]. * Shoshana Zuboff – The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019) * Avanessian, Armen, and Gerald Nestler, editors. Making of Finance. Merve Verlag, 2015. https://www.merve.de/index.php/book/show/493 [https://www.merve.de/index.php/book/show/493] * The legendary Technopolitics Working Group in Vienna and their open work “Technopolitics Timeline”, tracing information society: https://technopolitics.info/ [https://technopolitics.info/] * Sylvia Eckermann: http://syl-eckermann.net/ [http://syl-eckermann.net/] * Gerald Nestler: http://www.geraldnestler.net/ [http://www.geraldnestler.net/] * “Making Sense of Finance.” Finance and Society, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2017). Introduces the derivative condition: how speculation shapes reality. * Nestler, Gerald. “Renegade Activism.” Technopolitics Working Papers (2020). Defines resistance as insurrection beyond critique. * “Algorithmic Cognition at the Turn from Representative to Performative Power” a lecture performance with special guest, high-frequency, crypto trader and whistleblower Haim Bodek, as part of the exhibition “Hysterical Mining” at Kunsthalle Wien (2019) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ekXxV7ry2A [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ekXxV7ry2A] * I also briefly mention T.J. Clark on political theatre and the self-awareness of the spectacle in the introduction: T.J. Clark. “A Brief Guide to Trump and the Spectacle.” London Review of Books, Vol. 47 No. 1 (2025).