Events calendar
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Reading Group: Mikhail Bakhtin’s book Rabelais. Session 11
This is our long-awaited reading group on David Graeber’s favorite Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World. These meetings are limited in number. The group is meeting 12 times during 2024/25, on the last Thursday of each month. Please follow these steps to subscribe to our mailing list:
Reading Group: Mikhail Bakhtin’s book Rabelais. Session 10
This is our long-awaited reading group on David Graeber’s favorite Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World. These meetings are limited in number. The group is meeting 12 times during 2024/25, on the last Thursday of each month. Please follow these steps to subscribe to our mailing list:
Visual Assembly: A Playground of the Future / Sigana International Storytelling Festival
Ways of imagining a playground as a space of collectivity and care Every society relies on collective storytelling and social bonds. David Graeber and Nika Dubrovsky’s Anthropology for Kids books and workshops inspired the idea of Visual Assemblies, where people come together to collectively imagine the future. One long-standing focus of Visual Assemblies and Anthropology […]
Reading Group: Mikhail Bakhtin’s book Rabelais. Session 9
This is our long-awaited reading group on David Graeber’s favorite Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World. These meetings are limited in number. The group is meeting 12 times during 2024/25, on the last Thursday of each month. Please follow these steps to subscribe to our mailing list:
Reading Group: Mikhail Bakhtin’s book Rabelais. Session 8
This is our long-awaited reading group on David Graeber’s favorite Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World. These meetings are limited in number. The group is meeting 12 times during 2024/25, on the last Thursday of each month. Please follow these steps to subscribe to our mailing list:
Visual Assembly at Festival dei Matti, Venice
Between the 23rd and 25th of May, Nika Dubrovsky will hold a Visual Assembly at the Festival dei Matti in Venice, by involving speakers and participants in a conversation around this year’s theme of care and conflict. Held every year since 2009 in Venice, the ‘Festival dei Matti’ hosts a series of debates, lectures, interviews, […]
Reading Group: Mikhail Bakhtin’s book Rabelais. Session 7
This is our long-awaited reading group on David Graeber’s favorite Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World. These meetings are limited in number. The group is meeting 12 times during 2024/25, on the last Thursday of each month. Please follow these steps to subscribe to our mailing list:
Exclusive Influencer VIP Public Space Event
We’re in public space in downtown Manhattan for the first time! Our reach is expanding more than ever before. We have a VIP party but there’s good news: because you’re on this mailing list you can get access to the HIGHEST LEVEL of VIP EXPERIENCE simply by replying to this email and saying hello! See […]
Islands in the Future / Michael Hudson, Ann Pettifor, Yanis Varoufakis
On April 14, the University of West Indies will host the final public event of the DGI April Gathering in St Vincent. Yanis Varoufakis and Michael Hudson will join us for a discussion on debt and its implications for Global South–North relations. Their conversation will be facilitated by Ann Pettifor. Share on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/davidgraeberinst.bsky.social/post/3lmovy4glws2zShare on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/660267483406947Share on X (Twitter): https://x.com/Graeber_social/status/1911376422095958477Share on […]
Islands in the Future / Open-source technology workshops
On April 11, the DGI team will visit the St Vincent and the Grenadines prison to continue building our collaboration on open-source technologies workshops for inmates. We will have presentations from: — Adrian Bowyer, engineer, founder of the RepRap project — a talk on self-replicating 3D printers and the future of 3D printing; — Igor […]
Islands in the Future / Spirulina dinner
The discussion on April 10th during the DGI April Gathering in St Vincent will be followed by a dinner to celebrate the arrival of spirulina superfood on our island. Spirulina is an amazing blue-green algae packed with protein, vitamins, and minerals. It grows in warm freshwater and is easy to cultivate in small, eco-friendly set ups. This superfood isn’t […]
Islands in the Future / Museum of Care & the Survival Kit Collection
We are living through a time of profound change. To advance the legacy of David Graeber, we ask: What could a truly progressive and broadly supported project for the future look like? Alongside these conversations, we will also be working on the grand opening of the Museum of Care in St. Vincent. This is not just […]
Bloomberg, Giuliani, and Property Investors vs. The People of New York: Street Fight
We’re back in public space! Bring your favorite 90s outfit! t’s finally being settled. For too long this battle has been one-sided. Now is the time to determine who will be in charge of the future of New York. Join our critically acclaimed mugging 102 course (beginner friendly) and use it to push back against an […]
Michael Hudson Lecture series / Money, Debt & and how they shape our collective political imagination
On April 4th, Michael Hudson will address questions raised during his previous talk at the David Graeber Institute. This discussion is part of the Michael Hudson Lecture Series, which explores the nature of money and how today’s political landscape drives a profound economic shift. As the long-standing tenets of neo-liberal capitalism crumble, we must ask: What comes next? This event […]
Visual Assemblies and the Units of Care / Brainstorming session
On March 27th we will hold an online gathering for a brainstorming session about the new project — Care Units, or Units of Care, which is meant to be less of a drawing project and more of a large-scale visual public art initiative. We imagine printing a huge map — possibly 10 meters wide — […]
Democracy In Ancient Greece - Mirko Canevaro
We are holding a Zoom meeting to discuss David Graeber’s work with Mirko Canevaro who is the Professor of Greek History at the University of Edinburgh. The meeting will be related to David Graeber’s work: There Never Was A West, with a focus on the myths surrounding Democracy in Ancient Greece. We previously held in […]
Finance Is Just Another Word for Other People’s Debts / Steve Keen
We are holding a Zoom meeting to discuss David Graeber’s work with the economist and professor Steve Keen. The focus will be David Graeber’s work: Finance Is Just Another Word for Other People’s Debts. This piece was originally published in 2014 in which David Graeber wrote about Finance Capitalism and how it evolves around the […]
Events list
Bullshit Jobs, Part 3
Is your job killing you? Do you feel the crush of spiritual violence when at work? Are you a duct-taper, box-ticker, taskmaster, flunky, or goon? We’ve got the place for you. Join us. Bullshit Jobs: A Reading Group, where your humanity will be restored. In this session, we will talk about different critical stances on […]
Vygotsky, Play, and Experience
Kyrill Potapov will give a short intro to the thought of Vygotsky and we will discuss “On the Problem of the Psychology of the Actor’s Creative Work.“ In this short text, Lev Vygotsky explores the relationship between the experience of an actor and an audience, their social context and action we see on stage. The text […]
Why Do We Play? The Origins of Self-Consciousness, Freedom, and Morality, Part 2
‘Play as a principle of nature does not necessarily mean adopting any sort of milky utopian view. The play principle can help explain why sex is fun, but it can also explain why cruelty is fun. As anyone who has watched a cat play with a mouse can attest, a lot of animal play is […]
Housekeeping Committee
This is a group of people who assist room curators in taking care of their rooms.If you have the time and interest to help someone realize their vision, their educational efforts, please join us. We will also be discussing the development of a critical project: the Mastadon server, aimed towards creating a publicly run social […]
Bullshit Jobs, Part 2
Is your job killing you? Do you feel the crush of spiritual violence when at work? Are you a duct-taper, box-ticker, taskmaster, flunky, or goon? We’ve got the place for you. Join us. Bullshit Jobs: A Reading Group, where your humanity will be restored. Capitalism and Communism: Where Bullshit Jobs Prevail How, in the Soviet […]
Climate Change: Is it a Beat Up?; Or Will It Beat Us Up?; And Is There a Way to Beat It? (Brain Trust lecture #2)
Economists like Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus claim that global warming of 3.8C by 2100 will reduce GDP by a mere 5 percent. Climate scientists like Tim Lenton describe 3°C of warming as “catastrophic”. Who should you trust? Come along and find out from the author of Debunking Economics, Prof Steve Keen. Also learn how […]
Roy Bhaskar’s ‘Enlightened Common Sense’ and ‘From Science to Emancipation’ / How to Take Over the “David and his Philosophers”
In the first part of this session we’ll discuss the relationship between Roy Bhaskar’s dialectics (outlined in chapter 6 of Enlightened Common Sense) and David Graeber’s discussion and use of Marx in Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value (page 100, page 69, and other mentions of Bhaskar in the text). In the second part, building […]
THE ORIGINS OF MODERN DEBT POLITICS IN GREECE AND ROME – READING MICHAEL HUDSON’S “THE COLLAPSE OF ANTIQUITY” PART 4
In the fourth session we look at how public finance was taken over by oligarchs and how Sparta’s last kings tried and failed at reform. This closes our discussion of Greece as the spotlight turns on a much bigger predator – Rome. Again we try to apply David Graeber’s framework from Debt – The first […]
MATERIAL PHOTOGRAPHIES READING GROUP
The Material Photographies Reading Group meets regularly online to explore critical thinking/making around the photograph in its multiple forms and dynamic manifestations—to welcome new ways of thinking and celebrate the increasingly complex photosphere we inhabit. All are warmly invited to attend! Please find all the details below. As always, do get in touch for the Meeting link and […]
Why Do We Play? The Origins of Self-Consciousness, Freedom, and Morality
‘Play as a principle of nature does not necessarily mean adopting any sort of milky utopian view. The play principle can help explain why sex is fun, but it can also explain why cruelty is fun. As anyone who has watched a cat play with a mouse can attest, a lot of animal play is […]