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<p class="MsoNormal"
style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto">That
was quick. My discussion on Monday evening about <i>Defund
Culture: A Radical
Proposal</i> with the independent artist and researcher Seth
Wheeler for the
Minor Compositions podcast, hosted by Stevphen Shukaitis, is
online.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><b>Minor
Compositions Podcast - Season 2, Episode 5: ‘Defund Culture by
Any Means’
Necessary'<br>
</b><a href="https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=1885"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=1885</a><br>
YouTube: <a href="https://youtu.be/mk-j2uh9cdk"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://youtu.be/mk-j2uh9cdk</a><br
style="mso-special-character:line-break">
<br style="mso-special-character:line-break">
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto">Available
on all the usual podcast platforms.<br>
<br>
‘In this episode owe are joined by Gary Hall and Seth Wheeler for
a
wide-ranging conversation on cultural funding, radical publishing,
and the
changing conditions of collective knowledge production. The
discussion begins
with Hall’s recent book Defund Culture, which challenges
conventional calls to
increase arts funding by asking a more fundamental question: what
– and who –
is cultural funding actually for? Rather than defending existing
institutions,
Hall proposes that the current crisis in arts funding might be an
opportunity
to rethink the entire landscape, redistributing resources away
from entrenched,
upper-middle-class infrastructures toward more collective, plural,
and
relational forms of cultural production. <br>
<br>
From there, the conversation moves into the practical and
political challenges
of radical publishing today. Reflecting on projects such as Open
Humanities
Press and Agit Press, Hall and Wheeler discuss the tensions
between openness
and enclosure in contemporary publishing, the uneven realities of
open access,
and the difficulty of sustaining collective, non-commercial forms
of
intellectual work. Wheeler draws on experiences from worker
movements to
highlight the historical role of print media – newsletters,
pamphlets, and
leaflets – as machines to produce consciousness, capable of
expanding political
dialogue beyond academic and activist enclaves.How do these
earlier forms
resonate with, and diverge from, today’s digital platforms? What
happens when
knowledge production becomes entangled with the logics of content
creation,
personal branding, and algorithmic visibility? The conversation
explores how
financial precarity and platform economies shape what can be said,
by whom, and
under what conditions: raising questions about whether genuinely
collective and
autonomous forms of media can exist within, or beyond, these
systems.<br>
<br>
Ultimately this is a question of infrastructure: how to build
alternative
networks for producing and distributing knowledge that do not
simply replicate
existing hierarchies. From decentralized publishing models and
cooperative
platforms to the enduring importance of print as a social and
organizational
process, the episode maps out both the challenges and the
possibilities of
creating new cultural forms grounded in collaboration,
redistribution, and
shared intellectual life. Rather than offering definitive
solutions, this
conversation opens up a space for thinking through what it might
mean to
defend/defund culture by transforming it – experimenting with new
modes of
publishing, new institutional arrangements, and new ways of
working together.’<br>
<br>
<i>Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal</i> (open access): <a
href="https://www.mediastudies.press/pub/nb-hall-defund/release/4"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.mediastudies.press/pub/nb-hall-defund/release/4</a><br>
Open Humanities Press: <a href="https://openhumanitiespress.org"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://openhumanitiespress.org</a><br>
Agit Press: <a href="https://www.agitpress.net"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.agitpress.net</a><br>
<br>
Intro / outro music – Mischief Brew, The Reinvention of the
Printing Press</p>
<p></p>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Gary Hall
Professor Emeritus of Media @ Coventry University
Founding co-director of Open Humanities Press: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.openhumanitiespress.org">http://www.openhumanitiespress.org</a>
Blog: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/">http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/</a>
Latest:
Books: Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal">https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal</a>
Masked Media: What It Means to Be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative Intelligence: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/">http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/</a>
Blogpost: ‘"The Most Spoiled Generation": Boomer Theory, Algorithmic Hustle and the Drive Toward Something Else': <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2026/2/10/the-most-spoiled-generation-boomer-theory-algorithmic-hustle.html">http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2026/2/10/the-most-spoiled-generation-boomer-theory-algorithmic-hustle.html</a>
</pre>
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