On Friday June 30, 2017, A.L. Steiner delivered an 8-hour lecture at the Women’s Center for Creative Work as part of her  contribution to ARTIST WRITES for X-TRA. Below is a companion to Steiner’s lecture and essay, a reading list compiled from the 8-hour lecture. 

Steiner spoke for a full 8-hr work shift, and her presentation explored the root — or radical — condition of beliefs that are established through the proliferation of mediated information systems. These conditions were also taken up in Steiner and Otherwild’s essay for X-TRA published in the fall of 2017, in X-TRA Volume 20 number 1. Both lecture and talk are titled “It’s Nobody’s Fault: Extinction of Consciousness and Everything Else.”

The 125 entries link to the texts, persons and websites referred to over the course of the lecture, mapped by timecode. 

Thanks to Sarah Kersting, Matthew Villar Miranda, Jessica Renzelman, and Jazmin Smith for collating this comprehensive list.

It’s Nobody’s Fault: Extinction of Consciousness and Everything Else
READING LIST

00:12 Stokely Carmichael, “Black Power Address,” University of California Berkeley, October 29, 1966, audio recording, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFFWTsUqEaY.

6:00 Olga Bautista, Rosalinda Bortilla, Jessica Fujan, Nance Klehm, Andrea Fraser, Eden Batki

7:00 Jessica Fujan of Food and Water Watch.

7:30 Olga Bautista‘s activism in South Chicago.

8:30 Eden Batki and Nance Klehm, Weedeater, 2015.

9:00 Rosalinda Bortilla’s walking tours of Chicago.

9:40 Andrea Fraser, artist

11:00 Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism, ed. Jason W. Moore (Oakland: PM Press, 2016).

28:50 Jussi Parikka, The Anthrobscene (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015).

32:00 Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital (Cologne: Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 1891).

34:50 Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, (New York: Picador, 2014).

37:40 Jenny Holzer, Rejoice! Our Times are Intolerable, 1977-1982.

39:50 Claudia Rankine interviewed by Meara Sharma, “Claudia Rankine on Blackness as the Second Person,” Guernica, (November 17, 2014), https://www.guernicamag.com/blackness-as-the-second-person/.

40:00 Steve Edwards, “Forgetting Photography,” Photography: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017).

40:00 Wyndham Lewis, Blast 1, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1914).

40:50 Marshall McLuhan, Counterblast (London: Rapp & Whiting Limited, 1970).

43:12 Henry Kissinger‘s notion of “constructive ambiguity.”

43:54 Adam Curtis, HyperNormalisation, 2016. Documentary. HD video, 166 min.

55:12 Ronald Reagan’s 1980 slogan, “Make America Great Again“.

58:24 Leo Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?“, Vol. 43, AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1987), 197-222.

1:09:08 James Baldwin, “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity,” Community Church, New York, 1963, audio recording, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU0g5fAA2QY.

1:16:32 Prince, “Solo,” from the album Come, 1994. Warner Bros.

1:21:08 Clarice Lispector, The Stream of Life, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).

1:29:08 Bernadette Mayer, “To a Politician,” Scarlet Tanager (New York: New Directions Publishing, 2005).

1:29:08 Richard Meyer, Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (Ideologies of Desire) (Oxford University Press, 2002).

1:40:03 Shakespeare in the Park.

1:42:21 Roy Scranton, “The Compulsion of Strife,” Learning to Die in the Anthropocene (San Francisco: City Lights Publisher, 2015).

1:53:05 Sara Marcus, Girls to the Front:The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010).

1:55:31 Hailey Fuchs, “Yale publishes rules on campus activism,” Yale Daily News, March 29, 2017, https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/03/29/yale-publishes-rules-on-campus-activism/.

2:01:23 Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events.

2:21:18 Associated Press, “Grandparents and cousins aren’t considered ‘close’ family under Trump’s new visa criteria,” Los Angeles Times, June 29, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-new-visa-criteria-20170628-story.html.

2:21:42 Kyle McGee, Heathen Earth: Trumpism and Political Ecology (Punctum Books, 2017).

2:21:43 Theodor W. Adorno, The Stars Down to Earth (London Routledge Classics, 2002).

2:25:40 Laurie Weeks, Zipper Mouth (Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2011).

2:26:18 Ericka Huggins, former leader of the Black Panther Party.

2:27:41 Carla Cloer’s work securing monument status for Sequoia National Park.

2:31:30 Miya Masaoka’s work as a union agitator.

2:33:26 A. L. Steiner, More Real than Reality Itself, 2014.

2:39:33  Corrections Corporation of America, annual reports.

2:55:32 Justin Bond, “The New Economy,” from the album Dendrophile, 2011. WhimsyMusic.

3:00:02 Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).

3:00:24 Simone de Beauvoir interviewed by Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber, “Pourqoui Je Suis Feministe,” The Questionnaire, 1975, youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN2OWet8Tmg.

3:02:34 Self-Interned, 1942: Noguchi in Poston War Relocation Center, The Noguchi Museum, January 18, 2017 – January 21, 2018. 

3:03:28 Isamu Noguchi, I Become a Nisei, (Long Island City: The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, 2017), http://www.noguchi.org/sites/default/files/Isamu-Noguchi-I-Become-A-Nisei-Noguchi-Museum.pdf.

3:05:54 “Republicans Have Trifecta Control of 25 States & Need 6 More to Call for a Constitutional Convention,” Democracy NOW!, June 29, 2017, https://www.democracynow.org/2017/6/29/republicans_have_trifecta_control_of_25.

3:14:20 Alexei Koseff, “Death threats directed at Assembly leader over universal health care bill,” The Sacramento Bee, June 2017, http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article158738529.html.

3:17:32 Dr. Laurie Weeks, I Went to Find Some Kunst and All I Got Was This Lousy Kapital, 2006.

3:18:55 Kyle McGee, Heathen Earth: Trumpism and Political Ecology (Punctum Books, 2017).

3:28:24 Roski School of Art and Design MFA.

3:29:42 USC Global Energy Network: A Joint Initiative of USC Price School of Public Policy & USC Viterbi School of Engineering In association with The Communications Institute, Powering California: The Monterey Shale & California’s Economic Future (Los Angeles: University of Southern California, date unknown).

3:31:19 Craig Leeson and Jo Ruxton, A Plastic Ocean, 2016. HD Video, 104 min.

3:32:24 Jussi Parikka, The Anthrobscene (University of Minnesota Press, 2015).

3:37:28 Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays, (London: Verso, 2002).

3:43:56 Lauryn Hill, “Everything is Everything,” from the album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, 1998. Columbia Records. 3:43:5

3:49:24 Derrick Jensen, The Myth of Human Supremacy (Seven Stories Press, 2016).

3:57:06 Christian Frei, The War Photographer, 2001. Film, 96 min.

4:04:07 Andrew Morgan, The True Cost, 2015. HD video, 92 min.

4:04:22 Zhao Liang, Behemoth, 2015. Film, 95 min.

4:06:12 Kick it Over Manifesto.

4:06:50 Adbusters.

4:08:41 Friedrich Hayek, economist and philosopher.

4:11:37 Research & Degrowth.

4:13:52 Georgescu-Roegen, mathematician, statistician and economist.

4:14:42 Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? (Zero Books, 2009).

4:15:02 Fredric Jameson‘s ideas on postmodernism.

4:15:07 Julie Graham and Katherine Gibson, A Postcapitalist Politics (University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

4:15:28 André Gorz‘s writings on wage labor.

4:15:30 Working Artists in the Greater Economy

4:16:22 A. L. Steiner, “Death Chamber of Commerce,” Creative Time Reports, August 24, 2012, http://creativetimereports.org/2012/08/24/death-chamber-of-commerce/.

4:17:01 J.K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics (University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

4:18:37 Sylvia Federici and autonomist feminism.

4:22:52 “Minimum Wage in the United States,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States.

4:23:02 A. L. Steiner, “Death Chamber of Commerce,” Creative Time Reports, August 24, 2012, http://creativetimereports.org/2012/08/24/death-chamber-of-commerce/.

4:29:00 Ulrich Beck, World at Risk (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009).

4:33:16 Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks, Surviving Progress, 2011. Film, 86 min.

4:36:12 Marisa Mazria Katz, journalist and founding editor of Creative Time Reports.

4:36:33 Edward Mazria of Architecture 2030.

4:37:12 Worldometers.

4:38:06 Johnathan Ned Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality (University of Chicago Press, 2005).

4:44:32 Derrick Jensen, The Myth of Human Supremacy (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2016).

4:45:55  Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism, ed. Jason W. Moore (Oakland: PM Press, 2016).

4:59:28 Jedediah Purdy, After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene (Harvard University Press, 2015).

5:01:12 TJ Demos, Decolonizing Nature (Berlin and New York: Sternberg Press, 2016).

5:01:53 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Islands of Decolonial Love: Stories & Songs (Winnipeg: AK Press, 2013).

5:07:43 Gregg Bordowitz lecture, “Of The Passions and Art Today,” Artists Space, New York, March 2006.

5:09:08 Joshua Clover and Juliana Spahr, #Misanthropocene: 24 Theses (Oakland: Commune Editions, 2014).

5:09:17 Karen Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” Signs, vol. 28, no. 3 (University of Chicago Press, 2003).

5:19:01 Sylvia Wynter, Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis, ed. Katherine McKittrick (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).

5:24:43 Andrea Fraser, artist.

5:24:59 Olga Bautista‘s activism in South Chicago.

5:26:12 Jessica Fujan of Food and Water Watch.

5:32:16 Timothy Morton‘s concept of the imaginary “Away Place” where man-made waste ends up.

5:50:06 Barack Obama’s signing of the Club 21 Agreement.

5:51:08 Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui‘s teachings on Leftist Latin American governments.

5:54:02 Carl Jung‘s theory on subconscious mind.

5:54:35 Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace.

5:55:06 Nance Klehm‘s theory of plant communication and lost forms of intelligence.

5:59:50 Sylvia Wynter, Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis, ed. Katherine McKittrick (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).

6:00:36 Stephano Harney and Fred Moton, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Wivenhoe/New York/Port Watson: Minor Compositions, 2013).

6:01:36 Margaret and Christine Wertheim’s The Institute for Figuring.

6:01:47 Margaret Wertheim, Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything (Walker & Co., 2013).

6:02:05 Eden Batki and Nance Klehm, Weedeater, 2015. Trailer.

6:08:09 Angela Davis, Abolition Democracy (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004).

6:11:49 Pat Walters and Orrin Devinsky, “Fault Line,” Radio Lab, Season 12, episode 2.

6:12:50 Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).

6:14:50 Wu Tsang lecture, “Artist on Artists: Wu Tsang on Hito Steyerl,” Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, August 2016, audio recording https://soundcloud.com/mocalosangeles/artists-on-artists-wu-tsang-on-hito-steyerl.

6:15:50 Risa A. Puleo, “How to Look at Monsters: Staging Female Bodies from the Periphery of the Seventeenth-Century Spanish World in Baroque Portraiture and Hapsburg Collections,” CUNY Academic Works, (2015).

6:17:50 Emily Roysdon, “Ecstatic Resistance,” C Magazine, Issue 104, winter 2009.

5:50:06 Hito Steyerl, “Is the Museum a Factory?,” e-flux, June 2009, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/07/61390/is-a-museum-a-factory/ 6:19:46 .

6:20:47 James Nachtwey‘s documentation of mining.

6:21:26 Hito Stereyl, Factory of the Sun, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, February 21 – September 12, 2016.

6:22:26 Lee Edelman and Sylvia Wynter on homo economicus.

6:28:06 A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project.

6:31:46 Theodor W. Adorno, The Stars Down to Earth (London Routledge Classics, 2002).

6:31:53 Angela Davis, Abolition Democracy (New York: Seven Stories Press: 2004).

6:32:47 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Islands of Decolonial Love: Stories & Songs, (Winnipeg: AK Press, 2013).

6:43:36 Michel Foucalt, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias,” Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité, (October, 1984).

6:45:03 Claudia Rankine interviewed by Meara Sharma, “Claudia Rankine on Blackness as the Second Person,” Guernica, November 17, 2014, https://www.guernicamag.com/blackness-as-the-second-person.

6:45:56 Wyndham Lewis, Blast 1, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1914).

6:47:53 Henry Kissinger’s notion of “constructive ambiguity.”

6:48:55 Edward Bernays, Propaganda (Brooklyn: Ig Publishing, 1928).

7:10:19 Ronald Reagan’s 1980 slogan.

7:10:35 George Orwell, 1984, (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1949).

7:19:36 Bernadette Mayer, “To a Politician,“Scarlet Tanager (New Directions Publishing: 2005).