Nada Prlja: the left, language and writing

In 2013 artist Nada Prlja invited me to moderate Red Discussion, a performance-debate that aimed to untangle the conditions of possibility of Marxism and the Left in contemporary (Western) society. In the performance I sat in the centre of a red table in the form of a pentagon and write notes, concepts, ideas, and arguments emerging from the my discussion with five scholars: Dave Beech, Hannah Black, Gail Day, Mark Fisher, and Nina Power.
In 2019 Nada Prlja invited me to reprise my role in a second instalment of the work, within North Macedonia's pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The other 5 participants were Charles Esche, Maurizio Lazzarato, Chantal Mouffe, Laura Raicovich and Artan Sadiku.
In 'Nada Prlja: the Left, Language and Writing' I am reflecting on my experience of performing in Red Discussion 1&2, specifically considering the relations between speech, discourse, language and writing. I’m arguing that the kernel of this work is eminently linguistic; thus, instead of promising to reveal or discover the ‘essence’ of a ‘new left’, the project rather articulates an ‘infra-semiological system of signification’ (Roland Barthes) which resists the seduction of essentialism, mythification and ideologization.