Third Actors:
XG at the rA/Upture_2 conference,
OFF-Biennálé Budapest

Next month I’ll be taking part in the rA/Upture_2 conference, organised as part of the OFF-Biennálé in Budapest, Hungary. I’m going to be talking a bit about postmodernism’s deflation of political agency and how projects like accelerationism and speculative realism hope to intervene in the depressed space this creates.

After brief talks from myself, Ulrike Gerhardt and Julia Hartmann, we’ll have a panel discussion.

You can view the entire conference programme here and the Facebook event here. You can also visit the main OFF-Biennálé website here. Everything will be streamed on the OFF-Biennálé YouTube channel.

Find the abstract to our cluster of talks below, and see you there!


When we think of binaries it is we who embody a third observer, distanced enough to divide between sides. To embrace this conjuncture of dia_logistics we introduce the notion of a third actor. The third actors confuse the binary sense of co_existance, it re-situates the monologues hidden behind dialogues by responding or reorganising the manners of communication. How can we use this figure to untangle the trinity of past, present, future then?

Is the past allied with the present forming a retrotopia against the future? Or is it a bond between future and present against the past utopia?

Perhaps the past bonds with the future against the present as a dystopia. How can we intervene in these binary chronological orders?

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