Tribute to Dara Birnbaum by Piper Marshall—e-flux Index #8 launch

This episode was recorded live at e-flux on February 10, 2026, celebrating the launch of e-flux Index #8. The recording features Piper Marshall reading from her remembrance of Dara Birnbaum. Dara Birnbaum (1946–2025) was a pioneering American video and installation artist whose various critiques and transformations of the moving image have inspired artists internationally. An architect and painter by training, Birnbaum entered the nascent field of video art in the mid-to-late 1970s challenging the gendered biases of the period and television's ever-growing presence within the American household. Her work primarily addresses ideological and aesthetic features of mass media, involving the re-manipulation of television's idiomatic grammar and enacting a complex and critical engagement with the medium's representation of political events and the public's reception of history. Piper Marshall is an art historian, curator, and critic whose practice combines rigorous research with exhibition-making. She leads innovative, interdisciplinary work on modern and contemporary art, with a focus on art and technology. She has served on curatorial teams for Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning (2024) and Signals: How Video Transformed the World (2023) at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Additional exhibitions and collaborations include: Media and Mind Control (2025); Growing Sideways: Artists Performing Childhood (2024); Laurie Simmons: Clothes Make the Man (2018); Nina Chanel Abney: Safe House (2017); Judith Barry: Imagination Dead Imagine (2017); Silke Otto Knapp: Monotones (2017); Fia Backstrom: Woe Men Keep Going (2017); Sinister Feminism (2017); Judith Bernstein: Voyeur (2015); Ericka Beckman: You The Better (2015). She has written and lectured widely, contributing numerous essays and articles on the work of Joan Jonas, Dara Birnbaum, Eric N. Mack, Ed Atkins, and Carolyn Lazard. She has taught at Columbia and Wesleyan Universities. From 2014–2018, she served as an independent curator at Mary Boone Gallery. From 2007–2013, she was a curator at Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York. Marshall earned her PhD in the history of art and architecture from Columbia University and her BA from Barnard College. Index #8 explores the fragmentary complexity of the current moment through pointing out eleven emergent themes drawn from texts commissioned by e-flux throughout the spring of 2025. These indications for reading refuse the xenophobic illogic of the us/them, friend/enemy strategies of categorizing, and instead seek to index multiple temporalities and positions simultaneously—in a non-linear way. They bring together exhibition and film reviews, in-depth theoretical and historical essays on contemporary art, architecture, and design, interviews with artists, theorists, and filmmakers, journeys into the archive of film history, and shorter missives on sociopolitics and contemporary culture. The printed edition of the Index is available to purchase online and from select art and design bookstores, as well as museums, throughout Canada, East Asia, Europe, North America, and the United Kingdom. The publication is distributed by Antenne Books (Europe and the UK), Les presses du réel (Europe), Asterism Books (USA), Art Metropole (Canada), The Book Society (East Asia), and Buchhandlung Walther König (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). Annual subscriptions, covering four issues, are available at both institutional and individual rates here.

e-flux journal Associate Editor Andreas Petrossiants talks to author Andrew Ross about his recent book, The Weather Report: A Journey Through Unsettled Climates. Between the summers of 2023 and 2024, Andrew Ross visited Ramallah (Palestine), Dubai (UAE), Phoenix (USA), and Shanghai (China)—some of the landscapes most disturbed by human activity, whether through active warfare or massive development projects. Rather than offering another eco-polemic or recalling for us the dread prognostications of Malthus in the 19th century or Ehrlich in the 20th, The Weather Report is a clear-eyed and essentially optimistic book that proposes a pragmatic, just, and urgent new common ground reestablishing scalable projects of mutual aid and care as a new, essential center for our economic, ecological, and social well-being.  Andrew Ross is a social activist and Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. A contributor to The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, Artforum, Jacobin, New York Review of Books, and Al Jazeera, he is the author or editor of almost 30 books and hundreds of articles on a wide variety of topics—labor and work, urbanism, politics, technology, environmental justice, alternative economics, music, film, TV, art, architecture, and poetry. His articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines as well as in academic and public interest journals, and his books are published by mainstream trade, academic, and independent presses. He has lectured at hundreds of universities and cultural institutions in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Australia. Politically active in many movement fields, he is the co-founder of several groups–Gulf Labor Artists Coalition, Global Ultra Luxury Faction, Coalition for Fair Labor, Occupy Student Debt Campaign, Strike Debt, the Debt Collective, and Decolonize This Place—and is an organizer with others, including the American Association of University Professors and the US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He also serves on the steering committee of the national network of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine. Ross's books include The Weather Report; A Journey Through Unsettled Climates, Abolition Labor: The Fight to End Prison Slavery, Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt, and Carcerality, Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing, Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel (winner of a Palestine Book Award), Creditocracy and the Case for Debt Refusal, Bird On Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City, Nice Work If You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times, Fast Boat to China: Corporate Flight and the Consequences of Free Trade–Lessons from Shanghai, Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor, No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and its Hidden Costs, The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Property Value in Disney's New Town, Real Love: In Pursuit of Cultural Justice, The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life: Nature's Debt to Society, Strange Weather: Culture, Science and Technology in the Age of Limits, and No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture.

e-flux journal Associate Editor Andreas Petrossiants discusses States of Divergence with author Sven Lütticken.  In States of Divergence, Sven Lütticken invites readers into an exploration of history as accelerating catastrophe—and of alternative, oppositional, divergent practices in life, art and revolutionary thought. Set against the backdrop of global crises, from climate change to pandemics, Lütticken dissects contemporary cultural and political practices that attempt to break free from the disastrous momentum of capitalist modernity. His journey traverses fields including art theory, philosophy, and politics, presenting a nuanced critique of the ways in which deviant temporalities and forms of life confront or adapt to catastrophe.  Through a series of essays, the book tackles issues ranging from survival to prefigurative practice, indigeneity and internationalism, and the dialectics of critique and revolution. Lütticken blends personal narrative, historical inquiry, and theoretical reflection to question what it means to live—and resist—within the contradictions of our time. Sven Lütticken is an associate professor at Leiden University's Academy of Creative and Performing Arts / PhDArts and he coordinates the research master's track, Critical Studies in Art and Culture at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His books include Objections: Forms of Abstraction, Vol. 1 (Sternberg Press, 2022), the critical reader Art and Autonomy (Afterall, 2022), and States of Divergence (Minor Compositions, 2025). Read essays by Sven Lütticken in e-flux journal here.

A conversation with Paul Pfeiffer, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, and Anthony Elms recorded in May 2025. Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa makes art, writes about it, and occasionally edits essay anthologies. His artist's book, INDEX 2025, is out now from ROMA Publications, and his recent essay "ECHO—LOCATION," on installations at Dia Art Foundation by Cameron Rowland and Steve McQueen, featured in the April issue of e-flux journal.  Recent exhibitions include Scene at Eastman, at George Eastman Museum (2025), Greater New York at MoMA PS1 (2021), and But Still, It Turns at the International Center of Photography, New York (2021).  Read more essays in e-flux journal by Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa here. Paul Pfeiffer recasts the visual language of pop spectacle to investigate how media images shape our perception of the world and ourselves. Working in video, photography, sculpture, and sound, he is drawn to moments intended for mass audiences (live sports events, stadium concert tours, televised game shows, celebrity glamour shots), which he meticulously samples and re-edits to expose an uncanny emptiness underneath. From the hyperreality of photo retouching and digital erasure to the endless repetition of video loops, his mastery of postproduction allows him to magnify the surreal aspects of contemporary existence, where bodies become sites of saturated observation, and violence-as-entertainment flirts with nationalism, religion, and ancient myth. While he also experiments with the format and scale of his works, immersive audiovisual installations often cohabit with portable fetish objects in his exhibitions. Throughout his practice, Pfeiffer seeks to reflect and heighten the existential condition of the viewer as consumer by perversely blurring the boundary between voyeurism and contemplation. The recent exhibition discussed in this episode, Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the MCA Chicago.  Read a review from e-flux Criticism of Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles by Juliana Halpert. Anthony Elms organizes exhibitions and writes. He recently organized Rodney McMillian: Neighbors for the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Wa. opening in October 2025. An essay on artist Oliver Ressler, "Ellipsesverse," posts online this fall for Ressler's exhibition Scenes from the Invention of Democracy at the Museum Tinguely. His essay "Begin to begin to begin to begin to begin" is forthcoming in Ecstatic Aperture: Perspectives on the Life and Work of Terry Riley. from Auryfa / Shelter Press.

Editor Brian Kuan Wood talks to Evan Calder Williams about his e-flux journal essay series, "On Paralysis." Recorded in May 2025 before the launch of e-flux journal issue #152, the conversation discusses stoppage, sabotage, disability, delay, and damage, as well as the critical tools the "On Paralysis" series finds in the hidden intimacies between limited movement and expressive power.  Read all four installments of the series here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.    Paralysis has become a term and idea inseparable from contemporary understandings of subjectivity, infrastructure, politics, and war. Conjuring associations of indecision, physical immobility, and trauma, it names a breakdown of the normal processes of circulation and information that promise systemwide health and seamless flow. But what if the very smoothness of these circuits of production is precisely what debilitates human bodies and broader systems of relay and exchange? And what are the potentials for refusal and unexpected agency that can be found in the interval when nothing works like it's supposed to? Evan Calder Williams is an associate professor at the Center for Curatorial Studies for Bard College, where he also teaches in the Human Rights program. He is the author of the books Combined and Uneven Apocalypse; Roman Letters; Shard Cinema; and, forthcoming with Sternberg Press, Inhuman Resources. He is the translator, with David Fernbach, of Mario Mieli's Towards a Gay Communism and is a Contributing Editor to e-flux journal, as well as a former member of the editorial collective of Viewpoint Magazine.

e-flux Education editor Juliana Halpert talks to Coleman Collins. Collins is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and researcher whose work explores notions of diaspora in relation to technological methods of transmission, translation, copying, and reiteration. His most recent projects examine the connections between things-in-the-world and their digital approximations, paying particular attention to the ways in which real and virtual spaces are socially produced. Working across sculpture, video, photography, and text, Collins' practice attempts to locate a synthesis between seemingly opposed terms: subject and object; object and image; original and duplicate; freedom and captivity.   Coleman Collins is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow. He has also received support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation. He received an MFA from UCLA in 2018, and was a 2017 resident at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. In 2019, he participated in the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program.  Recent exhibitions and screenings have taken place at e-flux, New York; Ehrlich Steinberg, Los Angeles; Herald Street, London; Soldes, Los Angeles; the Palestine Festival of Literature, Jerusalem/Ramallah; Larder, Los Angeles; Hesse Flatow, New York; Brief Histories, New York; Carré d'Art, Nîmes; and the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna. His work is in the permanent collection of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of California, Irvine. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

This conversation between curators Ebony L. Haynes, Thomas (T.) Jean Lax, and K.O. Nnamdie was initiated alongside an essay series in e-flux journal titled "After Okwui Enwezor," edited by Serubiri Moses.  The episode begins with three short audio excerpts from [1] On the Politics of Disaggregation: Notes on Cildo Meireles' Insertions into Ideological Circuits—Parsons The New School for Design  [2] Postwar: Art between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945–1965—Fondation Giacometti [3] Art Dubai Global Art Forum 8: 1955–2055: A Documenta Century Exhibitions covered include: Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945–1965 (2016) and the 56th Venice Biennale: All the World's Futures (2015). Additionally, the idea of rigorous curating, and the horizon is explored in discussion of recent exhibitions including Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done (2018) at MoMA, and Invisible Man (2017) featuring Jessica Vaughan, Kayode Ojo, Torkwase Dyson and Pope.L at Martos Gallery, and Evil N*gger (2025) featuring Glenn Ligon and Julius Eastman at 52 Walker.   The "After Okwui Enwezor" series in e-flux journal reflects on the resounding presence of the late writer, curator, and theoretician. Along with a focus on his many innovative concepts like the "postcolonial constellation," the series presents a wide evaluation of Enwezor's curatorial and theoretical practice following other similar initiatives, such as the special issue on Enwezor by the journal he founded, Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art. Moving beyond tributes and biography, this series covers topics such as the relevance of Enwezor's approach to politics, the limits of the exhibition as a form for critique, his conception of modernity and writing on the contemporary, his nomadic epistemology, accounts of his biennials in Seville, Paris, and Venice as institutional critique, and the specific contribution of non-Western artists in the art world. Ebony L. Haynes is the curator and Senior Director at 52 Walker, a David Zwirner gallery space presenting longer format exhibitions with primarily conceptual and research-based artists. T. Lax is a curator of media and performance at New York's Museum of Modern Art, where he has co-organized Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done (2018), Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces (2022) and Ceremonies Out of the Air: Ralph Lemon (2024) among others. Thomas began his career at the Studio Museum in Harlem, where he contributed to the landmark "f show" contemporary art series in 2012 and put together When The Stars Begin To Fall: Imagination and the American South in 2014. K.O. Nnamdie is an artist, writer, curator, and art advisor. Nnamdie ran Restaurant Projects, a curatorial project between 2018 and 2025 based on their interest in the intersection between hospitality and the arts. Nnamdie also directed anonymous gallery between 2021 and 2024.  

This episode was recorded live at e-flux on September 19, 2024. The event, hosted by the African Film Institute, featured a screening of Lumumba (2000, 115 minutes) by Haitian director Raoul Peck, followed by a conversation between Feza Kayungu Ramazani of Centre D'art Waza and anthropologist Natacha Nsabimana.  Feza Kayungu Ramazani is an artist and researcher based in Lubumbashi. She is a member of the Power to the Commons project and Another Roadmap of Arts Education Africa Cluster (ARAC), which is a network of researchers and practitioners engaged in collaborative research revisiting the history, politics, and alternative practices in arts education through literature. She is also curatorial assistant at École du soir, administrator of Centre d'art Waza, and a critical writer questioning images of African beauty and exoticism. Her research on African values, creativity, ancestral practices, and technology aligns with a desire to reinvent the conception and conservative function of museums in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Natacha Nsabimana teaches in the anthropology department at the university of Chicago. Her research and teaching interests include postcolonial critique, musical movements, and the cultural and political worlds of African peoples on the continent and in the diaspora. The African Film Institute aims to create a home and a place of intimacy with African cinema in New York, through developing gradually and organically a viewing program animated by fellowships; a growing library; an active writers' room; and an expanding catalog of recorded dialogs. The African Film Institute draws from the visual cultures that view cinema as an evening school: a popular information system in the service of education, aesthetic experience, and public dissemination—employing a methodology concerning the use of cinema's collective production, and investing in viewing methods informed by different uses of time, visual and textual histories, and social struggles and hopes in mutuality between their own locality and the world at large. The African Film Institute is convened by Christian Nyampeta and hosted by e-flux Screening Room.

A conversation between artist Samia Halaby and Sanna Almajedi, recorded live following a performance at e-flux on September 10, 2024.  In the performance, Halaby used a computer program that she coded in the early '90s to generate abstract shapes. These were manipulated in real-time alongside sonic improvisation by musician Amir ElSaffar.  Samia Halaby is a trailblazer in contemporary abstract art internationally. In her distinctive painting style, Halaby draws inspiration from nature and historical movements such as early Islamic architecture and the Soviet avant-garde. Displaced from Palestine in 1948 with her family when she was eleven, Halaby was educated in the American Midwest at a time when abstract expressionism was popular but female abstract painters were marginalized. Halaby believes that new approaches to painting can transform our ways of seeing and thinking, not only within aesthetics, but also as a way to discover new perspectives for advances in teaching, technology, and society at large. This conviction has inspired her to pursue additional experiments in drawing, printmaking, computer-based kinetic art, and free-from-the-stretcher painting. Halaby's work is collected by many museums such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art (New York and Abu Dhabi); Cleveland Museum of Art; Institut du Monde Arabe; and Birzeit University (Ramallah).

This conversation between Shana Moulton and e-flux Film curator Lukas Brašiškis was recorded live at e-flux following a screening on Thursday, April 4, 2024. Weaving feminist undertones with surrealist imagery and sound, Shana Moulton's work explores the nuances of the contemporary psyche. Her Whispering Pines series, in particular, delves into the intricacies of self-help culture, the quest for spiritual meaning, and the often comedic absurdity of personal wellness rituals. In her performances, videos, and installations, Moulton, through the experiences of her alter ego, Cynthia, writes a narrative that is both personal and universally resonant, probing the boundaries between the mundane and the mystical in the time of global digital capitalism. The screening featured a selection of Shana Moulton's works: Whispering Pines Zero (2002, 6 minutes, a collaboration with Jacob Ciocci), Whispering Pines 1 (2002, 2 minutes), Whispering Pines 2 (2003, 4 minutes), Whispering Pines 5 (2005, 6 minutes), Repetitive Stress Injuries (2008, 12 minutes), The Galactic Pot Healer (2010, 8 minutes), Every Angle is an Angel (2016, 6 minutes), and the film-opera Whispering Pines 10 (2018, 35 minutes, a collaboration with Nick Hallett).  Moulton has had solo exhibitions at international institutions including Palais De Tokyo in Paris, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Kunsthaus Glarus in Switzerland, the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her work has been featured in Artforum, the New York Times, Art in America, Flash Art, BOMB, and Frieze, among others. Her work has been featured on Art21 and her single-channel videos are distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix. An edited version of this conversation was published on e-flux Film Notes. Film Notes, launched in June, features conversations with artists and filmmakers, scripts, and experimental writing on the moving image.