Launching: Fear of Content

bb9_feet_typing_courtesy berlin biennale

Launching the digital platform “Fear of Content”

An overflowing inbox. Unsolicited subscriptions. A 24-hour news cycle. But you still find yourself constantly refreshing your notifications. The intoxication driven by the steady flow of must-read content is a condition that has come to define our daily lives. Stolen from a seminal essay by Rob Horning, Fear of Content (2015) and spiced by Miltos Manetas " The new Castle", is the title co-opted by the 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art for its digital platform—a continuous feed of essays, interviews, digital projects, content, and more content. Starting right now, as you read this newsletter. Refresh or unsubscribe below.

Today we launch Natasha Stagg’s Trends and their Discontents, wherein the writer traces micro-trends to their sensational ends, McKenzie Wark’s Geopolitics of Hibernation, a reflection on the climate wars that are upon us, Chus Martinez’ The Complex Answer about different organizational forms of experience, exhibition, design, and the possibilities ahead, Boris Groys’ Cosmic Anxiety on the inescapable implications of universal connectivity, and Rob Horning’s Fear of Content, which intentionally misinterprets Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation (1966) to examine the relation of content and form in the age of internet.

Coming up: Miltos Manetas, Antoni Abad, åyr with Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist, CUSS Group, Kathleen Daniel, Cécile B. Evans with Andrew Snyder-Beattie, Oleg Fonaryov with Hito Steyerl, Simon & Daniel Fujiwara, GCC, Izabella Kaminska with Simon Denny, Meredith Meredith, Sean Monahan, New Scenario, Ingo Niermann, Alexandra Pirici, Puppies Puppies, Sean Raspet, as well as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Déborah Danowski with Michelle Sommer and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané.