DAVID GRAEBER INSTITUTE LAUNCH
We just opened The David Graeber Institute (DGI), which will provide a platform for projects related to David Graeber’s legacy, developing his ideas and projects that will take on a life of their own, continuing and contributing to his work.
The Institute will have only two projects: the David Graeber Archive and the Brain Trust (a project related to the climate crisis, led by David in the last year of his life).
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DAVID GRAEBER’S PIRATE ENLIGHTENMENT PRESENTATIONS
The David Graeber Institute will begin a series of meetings dedicated to David Graeber’s latest book, Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia. This book completes the trilogy he began in the essay “There Never Was a West,” continued with his collaborative book with the archaeologist David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything.
We will begin this presentation on January 24 at the Brooklyn Public Library in New York City. Register here.
It will be followed by a panel discussion at the LRB bookshop on 14 February.
On March 18, we will have a panel discussion in the British Library.
In April 2023, we will start a series of discussions and roundtables online and offline, and we hope to continue them throughout the year. Nika invited friends of David, historians, anthropologists, artists, and activists to hold online meetings to talk about topics covered in the book. Sometimes we will have discussions, sometimes lectures, and other times art workshops or assemblies.
Everyone is welcome to join us: bookstores, art and community centers, galleries, schools, or your private apartment where you can gather friends.
Register for the first meeting here.
PIRATE ENLIGHTENMENT DISCUSSION AT BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY
Virginia Heffernan, Edward Ongweso, Jr., Gideon Lewis-Kraus, and Andrew Ross discuss David Graeber’s Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, the final posthumous work by the coauthor of the major New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything.
Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies—vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of the European empire.
UPCOMING READING GROUPS
In February, we have five reading group sessions coming.
We continue our regular discussions on David Graeber’s ‘Debt: The First 5000 Years‘ led by Steve Bachelor. Join us on February 2 and February 16.
Next, we continue diving into Roy Bhaskar’s books ‘Enlightened Common Sense‘ and ‘From Science to Emancipation.‘ Join us on February 9.
We have got two more irregular meetings planned for February. On February 8, we are reading Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,‘ and on February 23, we are looking at Ayça Çubukçu’s paper ‘David Graeber’s Anthropology of Human Possibilities.‘
Finally, we are happy to announce that on May 25, we will have Andrew Johnson with us to discuss his paper ‘Bureaucrats with guns: Or, how we can abolish the police if we just stop believing in them’, where he develops David Graeber’s theory of police.
NEW ROOMS IN THE MUSEUM OF CARE
The Museum of Care keeps growing. We have five more rooms, and you might be of help to some.
David Graeber’s Tarot Cards is devoted to a discussion of magic forces that control our social order. The room is looking for photographers and actors to perform in the photoshoots.
Collectivity rooms look for participants, more ideas, and more contributions. It was made to facilitate a debate on how people gather together and build various forms of collectivity.
In the Room of Idleness, the curator gathers situations, texts, pictures, and people glorifying idleness, and your contribution here is, again, very welcome!
As a part of the new Brain Trust Culinary Collection room, we are going to conduct a series of cooking events with notable professionals. In this way, we want to raise awareness on how capitalism affects food distribution.
We also have two new rooms in development by guest curators. First Aid Kit Against Neoliberalism is a project of Paul Brady and Hege Vadstein devoted to the many ways that neoliberalism affects our world and tools to resist it. And Conservation Lab is a room to reimagine conservation practices and make them benefit social change.
APTART EXHIBITION: 50 YEARS OF PROTEST POSTERS IN THE UK
We are looking for a new temporary home to host our exhibition of Protest Posters.
Our first AptArt exhibition ‘50 Years of Protest Posters in the UK’ ’was organized by the Museum of Care and the Museum of Unrest and curated by Clive Russell and John Phillips.
The exhibition includes posters and banners from 1975 to the present day. It shows how poster designers collaborate with one another and draws upon a rich history for inspiration, a point made strongly by the inclusion of a banner stating ‘Deeds not Words’.
At the opening event, Nika Dubrovsky conducted a discussion between the curators of the exhibition. You can read or listen to the first half of the talk here.
