Accelerating Potlatch. Talk with with John Cussans .

A free-flowing talk with artist, writer, and arts educator John Cussans about potlatch, the Bataillean concept of excessive, communal expenditure, and whether figures like Trump represent a perverse modern version of it.A note on how John stopped consuming news entirely, the lost promise of the 1990s anarchist internet , the political polarization narrative, and the toll lacanian marxism takes on mental health. John Cussans is an artist, writer, and arts educator working across contemporary art, cultural history, and critical art theory. Among other things, he is the author of Undead Uprising: Haiti, Horror and the Zombie Complex , which traces the zombie figure from Hollywood back to its roots in Haitian Vodou and colonial history.