Vital Space
On the shameful deal Osborne-Mitsotakis are hammering out over the Parthenon antiquities – UNHERD
, 24/03/2023
From the very beginning, Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon’s statues and friezes caused something of a discursive British civil war. On one side were humanists, like Lord Byron; on the other were Empire apologists, who defend Elgin’s actions and support the British Museum’s inalienable property rights to the artefacts it, eventually, purchased from him. Over […]
Barcelona City Council’s fight to shield flamingoes from rent-seeking flights of fancy: An excellent case study in municipalism vs corporate greed
, 05/08/2021
Covid-19 forced billions of humans to re-assess the way we live, work and travel. Monstrous wildfires (from British Columbia to Greece and Croatia) and murderous floods (e.g. Germany) have confirmed that which we should have known: We, humans, have damaged the planet, possibly, beyond repair. Against this background, it is heartbreaking to observe how our […]
Why we need a Progressive International that must plan for today and for beyond capitalism – Keynote at the PI 2020 Summit, 18 SEP 2020
, 19/09/2020
Our era will be remembered for the triumphant march of a Twin Authoritarianism in whose wake the vast majority of humanity experience unnecessary hardship and the planet’s ecosystem suffers avoidable climate destruction. For a brief period, that Eric Hobsbawm described as the short 20th Century, Establishment forces were united in dealing with challenges to their […]
Ο Πολιτισμός στον Καιρό της Χρεοδουλοπαροικίας
, 19/07/2020
Η παρασιτική ολιγαρχία δείχνει το ασχημότερο πρόσωπό της όταν ασχολείται με τον Πολιτισμό Την 16η Ιουλίου του 2020, η κυβέρνηση της Νέας Δημοκρατίας έφερε στη Βουλή νομοσχέδιο για την μετατροπή του ΑΚΡΟΠΟΛ σε κέντρο Τέχνης και Δημιουργίας. Μια προσεκτική ανάγνωσή του καταδεικνύει την χυδαιότητα με την οποία οι πολιτικοί εντεταλμένοι της παρασιτικής ολιγαρχίας αντιμετωπίζουν […]
The Past, Present & Post-Pandemic Future of DEBT – El Pais
, 10/06/2020
Before capitalism, debt appeared at the very end of the economic cycle; a mere reflection of the power to accumulate already produced surpluses. Under feudalism, production came first with the peasants working the land to plant and harvest crops. Distribution followed the harvest, as the sheriff collected the lord’s share. Part of this share was […]
What Comes After Capitalism? (VIDEO by Sustainable Human)
, 22/04/2020
Free market capitalism died over a 100 years ago and gave way to monopoly capitalism. Monopoly capitalism is now not even able to reproduce itself, let alone sustain the planet, common decency etc. But what comes next? Thanks to the good people at PATREON for putting imagery to my words. Support the creation of more […]
DiEM25’s online art auction: A new way of funding democratic movements and a new relationship between participatory politics and art
, 31/01/2019
DiEM25 is changing the way we do politics and fund our campaigns. From our first day, we declared that we shall not be receiving money from bankers, Brussels, oligarchs and assorted vested interests – that we would struggle with whatever funding our activists could provide from their meagre resources. Today, faced with the uphill struggle of participating […]
DiEM Voice presents HERE & NOW: A CREATIVE VISION OF EUROPE, with Brian Eno, Srećko Horvat, Danae Stratou, Bobby Gillespie, Rosemary Bechler & Yanis Varoufakis. Wednesday 10th October 2018 (7pm), Platform Theatre, Central Saint Martins, London
, 04/10/2018
A culture war is underway in Europe – not between the ‘anywheres’ and the ‘nowheres’, but between those who use culture to divide – by class, by race, by nation – and those who use it to connect and include. This war is not based in Parliament – but on the street, in our homes, […]
The Globalising Wall: How Globalisation built walls and divisions. By Y. Varoufakis & D. Stratou, in the Architectural Review
, 20/06/2018
Our theme is a wall. A wall that is neither some ordinary physical structure at a specific site, nor a symbolic wall. It takes a material form in sites around the globe while transcending locations and leapfrogging whole continents as if in a strange quest to globalise itself, to infect our supposedly unifying world with […]
At home with the Financial Times – by Bruce Clark, 11 APR 2018
, 15/04/2018
Yanis Varoufakis is full of teasing paradoxes. As a radical economics guru, he expounds on the state of the world with a mixture of burning grievance and brimming, almost imperious, self-confidence. Aged 57, his personal baggage includes a keen sense of the wrongs of recent Greek history, which overshadowed his parents’ lives, and the glories […]
SHAKING THE SUPERFLUX: Shakespeare, economics, and the possibility of justice – 6th Annual Shakespeare Rose Lecture, 19th March 2018, Rose Theatre, Kingston
, 22/03/2018
Full script of my lecture at the Rose Theatre on Shakespeare: Since brevity is, indeed, the soul of wit, let me begin by stating the obvious: I am as qualified to deliver an annual Shakespeare lecture in this splendid theatre as an ant that walks in wonder on an iPhone is able to explain the mystery […]
Calling for an immediate end to investments in new fossil fuel production and infrastructure
, 14/12/2017
DECLARATION We the undersigned, call for an immediate end to investments in new fossil fuel production and infrastructure, and encourage a dramatic increase in investments in renewable energy. We are issuing this call to action in the lead up to the climate summit hosted by President Macron in Paris this December. President Macron and other world […]
Long, personal interview with William Leith in The Guardian on ‘Talking to my Daughter About the Economy’
, 03/11/2017
Yanis Varoufakis is telling me about the birth of his daughter, Xenia. “What I felt was an immense weight of responsibility,” he says. “Absolutely blind love and the sense of focusing on one individual.” But the experience didn’t make him feel like a different person. “It didn’t change my internal constitution or the way I looked […]
Lesbos’s Ghosts, Europe’s Disgrace – Project Syndicate op-ed, 31st October 2017
, 31/10/2017
Oct 31, 2017 YANIS VAROUFAKIS , GEORGE TYRIKOS-ERGAS In September alone, another 2,238 refugees arrived in Lesbos, despite Turkey’s attempts to cut the flow. A camp designed for 2,000 people now “houses” three times that number, behind rows of barbed wire, in a magma of mud, refuse, and human excrement. ATHENS – In 2015, hundreds of thousands of […]
On Documenta 14, Athens – in conversation with iLiana Fokianaki, Art Agenda
, 12/06/2017
“We Come Bearing Gifts”—iLiana Fokianaki and Yanis Varoufakis on Documenta 14 Athens Created in 1955 by artist and curator Arnold Bode, Documenta sought to advance the cultural reconstruction of Germany within the postwar European order. Reoccurring every five years, it has since unfolded into a periodic forum for contemporary art. When Adam Szymczyk was appointed artistic director […]
Full transcript of the Yanis Varoufakis | Noam Chomsky NYPL discussion
, 28/06/2016
The full transcript of my discussion with Noam Chomsky at the New York Public Library (26th April 2016) was just sent to me by Kelly Patrick Gerling. I thank him profusely. Here it is, just below the video window April 26, 2016, LIVE from the New York Public Library, www.nypl.org/live, Celeste Bartos Forum YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Good evening, we don’t have anyone […]
On the human penchant for art & science: Brian Eno & Yanis Varoufakis in conversation
, 26/06/2016
This conversation, moderated by David McWilliams, took place on 17th May 2016, at the Dalkey Book Festival. Its theme? Why humans have a need for art and what is the difference/similarity between art and science. Plus a little politics thrown in for good measure.
Of Loss and Retrieval – latest and last article in WdW Review
, 27/01/2015
Photo of an unknown boy, which we can imagine to have been Kostas, who went missing in 1992 during the evacuation of ethnic Greek refugees from Smyrna. Image courtesy of Red Cross Archive, Greece. This is my eighth and, for the time being, final article for Witte de With Review (an initiative of Rotterdam-based Witte de With Center for Contemporary […]
MODERN MONEY: AESTHETICS AFTER THE GOLD STANDARD (video), UC Berkeley, 7th Nov. 2014
, 18/11/2014
Click the image above to watch a 60′ keynote on Money, and its Aesthetics, after the Gold Standard, following by a presentation by Danae Stratou of her remarkable installation ‘It’s Time to Open the Black Boxes’ – click here for a full description (and pictures and video) of that work.
Chosen Cells – WdW Review
, 29/08/2014
Chosen Cells is a sequel to Solitary Subversives and our seventh article for Witte de With Review (an initiative of Rotterdam-based Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art) of which we, vitalspace.org and I, are their… ‘Athens Desk’). Click here for the Witte de With Review site which contains several photos missing here. Or read on…
Greek summer stops posting…
, 01/07/2014
Dear Reader, You may have noticed that my posts have ceased over the past week. Summer is responsible. A wonderful Greek summer, spent mostly on a tiny boat in the Aegean. Back in mid-July, with posts mostly reflecting my total immersion in the writing of my next book, entitled EUROPE UNHINGED: The next phase of the […]