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Ryan will share some ideas that stemmed from his PhD research, focussing in particular on the (often reviled) notion of "medium specificity". In the history of art criticism, medium specificity came to symbolise the hard edge of modernist formalism and gave rise to reactionary projects such as contemporary art's "postmedium condition". Ryan is interested in reconceiving the notion of medium specificity through its radical expansion, steering it away from its formalist origins to understand artistic and cultural forms as mediums of production in the context of a global capitalist present. He invites you all to read and respond to a rough draft of a paper-in-progress, in which he attempts to outline a "politics of medium specificity".

'Class' is a fiendishly complex and dynamic concept. This is of course true for those working with and through class explicitly, but perhaps even more so for those of us working on social issues in general. We often hear talk of 'the' working class, 'the' middle classes, or indeed 'the' capitalist class, which can give the impression that they are pre-determined, even static, categories; or that their very nature is something inherited, passed down from one generation to the next, and that perhaps they come with certain guarantees – particularly in relation to political identity and electoral politics.

A review article of Kyle Devine's 'Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music'. MIT Press, 2019.

A book review of Popular Music in the Post-Digital Age: Politics, Economy, Culture and Technology. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.