capitalism – Arena

Sep 2023

A prolegomenon to the indirect contributions of Atlantic chattel-slaveries to the revolution inside capital

Who Are You?

Dec 2021

What caught me by surprise was how quickly I’d lost touch with all the nuances of whole-body presence that, once upon a time (was it really only twenty months ago?), we routinely read and responded to in any of scores of encounters on any given day…

Editorial, Arena no. 7: The Biopolitics of COVID

Arena Quarterly no. 7

Alison Caddick

Sep 2021

The pandemic very likely is the result of development pressing into once wild places and disturbing achieved balances between nature and human settlement, development that has been fuelling worldwide consumption and a disconnection from nature at an ever-accelerating pace.

Missing the Value of Care

Arena Quarterly no. 6

Elise Klein

Jun 2021

The contemporary punitive turn in Australian social security features disinvestment from actual payments made to individuals...as well as investment in punitive mutual-obligation programs such as ParentsNext.

Editorial, Arena no. 4: Post-Trump Fantasies

Arena Quarterly no. 4

Alison Caddick

Dec 2020

While an America oriented to international climate agreements will make an important contribution, ‘Me? A socialist?’ Biden is not very likely to understand or seek to basically reform the hyper-destructive forces of contemporary capitalism.

A continent that burns. And a world that’s getting hotter. Welcome to the Pyrocene.

Arena Online

Cam Walker

15 Oct 2020

The world has heated as a result of human activity and now all fire events occur in a warmer environment. This is well documented. We have known it for years.

Government abandons the arts: what’s to be done?

Arena Online

Kevin Murray

1 Oct 2020

Rather than an organic ‘culture’ with its own shared meanings, the arts ‘industry’ is an aggregate of individual interests.

We need to use less fossil gas rather than increase supply: demand-side answers for gas regulators

Arena Online

Jim Crosthwaite

1 Oct 2020

The southern states do not need more fossil gas. Energy needs can be met with existing resources, if smart demand-side tools are employed. Corporations should not be allowed to build new infrastructure to explore, process, store and transport fossil gas. More exploration onshore or offshore is not necessary.

Après moi, le déluge: Artists after Art

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Justin Clemens

Sep 2020

The ‘artist’ is no longer simply an individual maker, an avant-garde visionary, a person exploring the specifics and limits of a medium, or indeed any of the other familiar figures of aesthetic modernity. Instead, the ‘artist’ is marked out by their success at doing exactly what late capitalism demands; that is, everything, and in a flagrantly vacuous way.

‘The First Cry of a Newborn World’: The Trinity Test at 75

Arena Online

Richard King

28 Jul 2020

The bright young things of Silicon Valley, with their dreams of direct democracy on Mars and digital immortality, are often difficult to take seriously. But their hubris is only the gaudy version of a broader cultural and political belief in the power of science and technology to edit, alter and override the very stuff from which our world is made—in other words, to ‘play God’.