Weird Economies presents "The Exploits of Play"

What is the anti-capitalist game? For several decades, Jay Jordan and Isa Fremeaux of the game-changing Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination have been using play and games as methods of class war: from the disruptive frivolity of Reclaim the Streets marches to a Carnival Against Capitalism that shut down the London Stock Exchange; from the Climate Games that crowdsourced playful interventions against greenwashing to the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army. On the final episode of "The Exploits of Play" we speak to Jay and Isa about their past “work” as well as their current activities, including at the ZAD: the autonomous “zone to defend” at Notre Dame de Landes, near Nantes, France, the subject of their 2021 book We Are Nature Defending Itself. Jay Jordan is co-founder of Reclaim the Streets (1995-2000) and the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, and co-author of We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism (Verso, 2003) and A User's Guide to Demanding the Impossible (Minor Compositions, 2011). Isabelle Fremeaux is a popular educator and action researcher. She was formerly Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College London. Along with Jay Jordan, she is a coordinator of The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination. Together, they are the authors of "We Are 'Nature' Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones" from Pluto Press in 2021. That book details their role in the struggle for the ZAD: an autonomous community in Western France that for decades fought back against state repression and is today a beacon of hope for radical ecological activists in that country and around the world. For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com. Credits: Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar Noorizadeh Host: Max Haiven Producer: Halle Frost Sound editor: Faye Harvey Sponsor: Canada Council for the Arts ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

What if we handed some of the most consequential decisions about the future of humanity and the planet to a bunch of game-obsessed nerds? From artificial intelligence to the future of money, from the way we find love to the way we come to know our bodies and communities, Silicon Valley has become one of the most revolutionary and transformative forces of our times. What games do they play? In this episode Christian Nagler helps us understand with a deep dive into the ideology and fantasy of the “longevity community” seeking to leverage unimaginable wealth and technological utopianism to beat death at its own game. Christian Nagler is a writer and artist. His work looks at (and performs) the imbrications of embodiment and global economics both in his everyday life and in projects like Market Fitness [http://www.artpractical.com/feature/market-fitness/], and Yoga for Adjuncts [http://artjournal.collegeart.org/?p=6503] he researches critical ethnography, political theory, and media and cultural studies at UC Berkeley. For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com. Credits: Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar Noorizadeh Host: Max Haiven Producer: Halle Frost Sound editor: Faye Harvey Sponsor: Canada Council for the Arts ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

In an age when our most intimate connections with others are mediated by gamified interfaces, it’s high time to revisit how the game of love became the plaything of capital. Alfie Bown joins us for episode 8 to explore the joys and horrors of the ero-tech and the burning question: can hookup apps, dating sims and thirst traps can be reclaimed for the common good? Alfie Bown is editor of "Everyday Analysis" and "Sublation Magazine". His books include Post Comedy, which is forthcoming in 2024, Dream Lovers, Capitalism and the Gamification of Relationships from 2022, Post Memes from 2019 and the PlayStation Dream World from 2017. For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com. Credits: Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar Noorizadeh Host: Max Haiven Producer: Halle Frost Sound editor: Faye Harvey Sponsor: Canada Council for the Arts ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

On the blockbuster "reality" tv show "Love Island," an even number of conventionally attractive cis men and women compete to partner up and win the audience's affection in a spectacle that, like most of its kind, sees producers push heteronormative cliches to their absurd and humiliating limits. On this episode, theorist and author Sophie Lewis joins us to explore the show's popularity in a late capitalism era marked by pervasive "heteropessimism" and the relentless gamification of romance. Sophie Lewis is an ex-academic, freelance writer, and independent scholar with teaching affiliations at Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. In 2022, they published Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation from Verso and they have an upcoming book called Enemy Feminisms set to be published in 2025 from Haymarket Books. For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com. Credits: Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar Noorizadeh Host: Max Haiven Producer: Halle Frost Sound editor: Faye Harvey Sponsor: Canada Council for the Arts ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

The worldwide gaming market is estimated at $347 billion. That's a hefty chunk of change, power and influence which lies in the hands of an exceptionally few game makers primarily in the global north. How does the culture of an industry like gaming leak into the broader political sphere? Episode 6 of "The Exploits of Play" features guest Thiago Falcão who is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Digital Media at the Federal University of Paraíba. He is the current president of the Brazilian chapter of the Digital Games Research Association - Digra, which he helped found in 2022. He researches the relationships between entertainment, video games, and neoliberal capitalism, with a broad focus on issues related to work, politics, and financialization dynamics in these media. For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com. Credits: Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar Noorizadeh Host: Max Haiven Producer: Halle Frost Sound editor: Faye Harvey Sponsor: Canada Council for the Arts ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.