In this episode we talk about anarchy. Through the scholarship of Bima Satria Putra, David Wengrow, and Stevphen Shukaitis, we explore the longer histories of anarchy in South East Asia. Long histories of refusal, separation and difference emerge across the archipelago in response to various forms of centralised authority. History shows anarchy always wins. Instead of anarchy coming at the end of “civilisation,” it can be thought of as the start of experimentation in different communal organisation. We discuss how this refusal is always also a refusal of centralised gender and sexuality. We descend into the problematics of classification and dive into the violence at the centre of white nationalism as productive of difference where there is none. Then Melletios gets angry on a bus, and Tim finds a gun hilarious.

Further Reading

Bima Satria Putra, Anarchy in Alifuru, 2025

Bima Satria Putra, David Wengrow, and Stevphen Shukaitis, Fire Tribes and Stateless Worlds: A Conversation, e-flux, 2026

Dagmar Herzog, The New Fascist Body, 2025

David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, 2021

Shukaitis, S. and Figiel, J., The Wages of Dreamwork Class Composition & the Social Reproduction of Cultural Labor. Minor Compositions, 2024

Hakim BeyT.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone , 1991

In this episode Melletios and Tim discuss charity collectors,hot lecturers, wheelchairs using bike lanes and a design for a perfect cow killer. We (finally) get to Paul Preciado’s Pharmacopornography. We discuss the history of biopower via Kodak, fallout shelters and Miss Atomic Bomb. All of this for Tim to arrive at his “trauma” of being kicked out of a mall by mall cops. This shit is killing us, so listen along if you want it to kill you too. x

"Gustave" typically refers to either the infamous man-eating Nile crocodile in Burundi or the French civil engineer behind the Eiffel Tower. from wikipedia just sayin

Links to smarter people:

Paul Preciado, Testo Junkie

Beatriz Colomina, X-Screens: Röntgen Architecture

J. Logan Smilges Crip Negativity

In this episode our painting is selected for the Salon des Refusés, and Melletios goes to the opening. He embarrasses himself but somehow makes friends with Craig Foster. Meanwhile Tim tries to start, but Melletios needs to know what brand of salt Tim puts in his hair. Eventually Tim discusses Effigy Attack and the laws around paintings being treated as actual humans (for the purposes of being hanged during the French revolution). If a painting can come alive so it can be harmed, how can we think of contemporary painting and AI as the ghost of deep traumas in excess of photography? How can we think of the new laws around AI generated porn as the tip of the iceberg? Where each AI image holds the traces of the image based work and extractive mining that are required for the spectacle to appear. Can “alive” paintings reveal that ‘truth emerges through art as revelation rather than representation’ (Bogna Konior, 2026).

Links:

• Blak Douglas Artist Website
• Karla Dickens at AGNSW Website
• Laurel Nakadate Artist Website
• Wangechi Mutu at MoMA
• Up in the Sky by Tracey Moffatt 1997
• War in the Age of Infinite Evidence: On AI-Generated War Photography, Bogna Konior, 2026
• Seeing Against Seeing by Alexey Yurenev 2023-2025