Shumon Basar

A collective book that proposes to question human and non-human existence in the current social context, spanning different cosmogonic views.

The Vita Nova editorial project had its genesis in the Fórum do Futuro: a programme of debates, artist talks, and performances, held annually in the city of Porto, that brings together guests from different artistic and scientific practices to reflect on fundamental issues for contemporary societies. Given the impossibility of holding the 2020 edition, due to the challenges posed by the pandemic, the Fórum do Futuro is instead presenting a book that proposes to question human and non-human existence in the current social context, spanning different cosmogonic views. The book consists of four thematic sections that combine different artistic, scientific, philosophical and technological perspectives in written and visual essays, stories and interviews.

Texts by Sophia Al-Maria, K Allado-McDowell, Shumon Basar, Guilherme Blanc, Rosi Braidotti, Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, GPT-3, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Kirsten Keller, Filipa Ramos, Tabita Rezaire, Jenna Sutela, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Suzanne Treister, Aby Warburg, Chandra Wickramasinghe, Feifei Zhou.

Petrit Halilaj and Danh Vo in conversation; Forensic Architecture (Eyal Weizman, Nour Abuzaid, and Elizabeth Breiner); Gabrielle Goliath; Edward W. Said; Shumon Basar; Dani Blanga Gubbay; Yvonne Rainer; Thomas Eggerer and Jochen Klein; Tobias Pils; Travis Jeppesen...

Collective intelligence (along with its wildly popular counterpart, brain rot) is a recurring subject of late. This issue is woven together through reflections on methodologies of the collective, larger-than-ourselves dynamics and "what goes unuttered (of, perhaps, what is painfully unutterable)," as Zoé Samudzi writes about Gabrielle Goliath—whose project for the South African pavilion at the upcoming Venice Biennale has been cancelled by the Arts and Culture Minister of her country for being "divisive." We stand in solidarity with the artist. Forensic Architecture's Eyal Weizman speaks of new ways of detecting "hyper-relations" as strategies to confront systemic violence. Edward W. Said, in his crucial 1993 essay "Speaking Truth to Power" (reprinted here), argues that "the intellectual's voice is lonely, but it has resonance because it associates itself freely with [. . .] the common pursuit of a shared ideal." And in our Curators section, Shumon Basar memetically reaffirms that now more than ever, "Comment is king."
Let's not shy away from commenting.

This issue comes with different covers, randomly distributed.