Is the art world willing to take real political risks, or does it perform radicality within safe limits? What to make of aesthetic gestures of dissent without institutional accountability and without any attempts at broader movement building? Peter Watkins probes these questions and more in the context of Les Rencontres d’Arles 2025, arguing that a familiar absence remains despite this year’s theme of ‘disobedient’ images. Elsewhere, festival highlights include Nan Goldin’s recurrin...| 1000 Words
Tensions resurface in different forms in our latest roundup of What We’re Reading. Criticism negotiates altered modes of circulation; imperial violence continues to determine who speaks, who is seen and under what terms; and the metaphysics of development and hierarchy remain inscribed in our institutions and imaginaries. Higher education vacillates between managerial complicity and the […] The post What We’re Reading #4: Summer 2025 appeared first on 1000 Words.| 1000 Words