Join us for a reading and conversation with Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung, a writer and cultural worker whose work focuses on anarchist and dissident publication practices, utopian thresholds in language, and literary expressions of the revolutionary consciousness. Eugene will read from his recent publication Bitterness & Wit (Asymmetry Art Foundation, 2023) followed by a conversation with Chloe Chignell. 

Schedule
15:00-15:30  Reading
15:30- 16:00  Conversation

About Bitterness & Wit
The titular story, Bitterness & 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 second story is a letter to a failed intimate relationship named Dear—(A Post-Mortem), and the third is a fable about the illusions and fantasies we trade with one another to keep the experience of love afloat, titled In the Heart of Mother Magpie.
Bitterness & Wit was published by the Asymmetry Art Foundation, London, within the framework of Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung's curatorial fellowship at Whitechapel Gallery in 2023. 

About Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung
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.