Today we have the pleasure of sharing the recording of a reading by Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung that took place on September 28th of this year. Eugene reads from his most recent publication Bitterness and Wit, published by the Asymmetry Art Foundation, London, within the framework of Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung's curatorial fellowship at Whitechapel Gallery in 2023. The reading is followed by a conversation with Chloe Chignell.

The titiular story in the collection, Bitnerness an Wit follows a museum worker who feels a profound sense of suffering as he vulgarises language to write jargon-filled wall texts for a contemporary art institution he finds deeply unserious and unrigorous. Amongst other things, he questions the emancipatory valence given to language in certain schools of psychoanalysis, and poses questions to do with whether giving language and form to a series of symptoms can alleviate an experience of suffering tied to something so material, and inescapable, like the wage. The reading is followed by a conversation I had with Eugene in which we discuss his approach to writing fiction and art critisim and his thinking on practices of institutional critique.

Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung is a writer, cultural worker, and founding editor of Decolonial Hacker. He is particularly interested in anarchist and dissident publication practices, utopian thresholds in language, and literary expressions of the revolutionary consciousness. In 2023, Eugene was the Asymmetry Curatorial Fellow at Whitechapel Gallery, London, where he curated the exhibition Anna Mendelssohn: Speak, Poetess.

Eugene has been a curator-in-residence at Delfina Foundation, and was previously part of the curatorial and public program teams at the Julia Stoschek Foundation and documenta fifteen, respectively. His writing has appeared in places such as e-flux Criticism, Third Text, ArtReview, Griffith Review, Art+Australia, and more. In 2021, he won the International Award for Art Criticism (IAAC).

Eugene currently teaches critical theory and curatorial practice at Design Academy Eindhoven. Previously, he has given lectures at RMIT’s School of Architecture and Urban Design, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, UCL Slade School of Fine Art, and Fudan University. Eugene holds degrees in art history, gender studies, and law from the University of Sydney.

This episode was recorded and edited by Ros Del Olmo. You can check out past and upcoming events via the website rile.space.