Ark Live—After The Great Refusal: A Conversation with Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen

Ark Audio

Here is the audio from our evening of conversation with art historian and cultural critic Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen to mark the release of his new collection of essays, "After the Great Refusal". "After the Great Refusal" offers a Western-Marxist reading of contemporary art focusing on the continued presence (or absence) of the avant-garde’s transgressive impulse. Taking art’s ability to contribute to a potential radical social transformation as its point of departure, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen analyses the relationship between the current neoliberal hegemony and contemporary art, including relational aesthetics and interventionist art, new institutionalism and post-modern architecture. Mikkel Bolt Rassmusen is an art historian and cultural critic. He is Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, and is co-editor of the journals K&K and Mr. Antipyrine. He is the author of many books in Danish and two previous books in English: Playmates and Playboys at a Higher Level: J.V. Martin and the Situationist International (Sternberg Press S.À.R.L., 2014) and Crisis to Insurrection (Minor Compositions, 2015). He has two forthcoming books in English from Zero Books: "After the Great Refusal" and "Trump's Counter-Revolution". He has published articles about anti-capitalist activism, the revolutionary tradition, and the Situationist International, in journals such as e-flux journal, Multitudes, Rethinking Marxism, Texte zur Kunst, and Third Text. He has co-edited Totalitarian Art and Modernity (Aarhus University Press, 2010, co-edited with Jacob Wamberg), Expect Everything Fear Nothing: The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere (Autonomedia, 2011, co-edited with Jakob Jakobsen), and Cosmonauts of the Future: Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere (Autonomedia, 2015, co-edited with Jakob Jakobsen). Other recent activities include the exhibition “This World We Must Leave” (made in collaboration with Jakob Jakobsen) at Kunsthall Oslo, Dec. 2016-Jan-2017).