January events

This January, we start the new year with programs examining the unstable but vital role of the recluse, cooperative methods and expanded processes, the entanglement of art and spiritual practice, revolutionary hope, and the operations of transmission itself.

Featuring Mary Walling Blackburn with Paul Chan; George Maciunas, Jeffrey Perkins; Onisaburō Deguchi with Alexandra Munroe, Anton Vidokle, Hallie Ayres, Lukas Brasiskis and Ben Eastham; Richard Wright, with Kazembe Balagun, and John Bohn; and Richard Serra, Joan Jonas, Gerry Schum, Nancy Holt, and Carlota Schoolman.

Tuesday, January 13, 2026
Mary Walling Blackburn’s Cream Psychosis, with Paul Chan
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Join us for a conversation between Mary Walling Blackburn and Paul Chan in celebration of the launch of Walling Blackburn’s new book, Cream Psychosis (2026), out now from e-flux journal and Sternberg Press. Mary Walling Blackburn will read an excerpt from one of the essays in the book, followed by a discussion between Chan and Walling Blackburn on, amongst other things, the unstable but vital role of the recluse, class traitor, or gender-shredder in a shifting regime, as well as the question of why might an artist might resort to text, written or broadcast by radio wave, here and now? Read more here.

Thursday, January 15, 2026
Two Thousand Seasons: A Preview of 2026 and Beyond
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Taking its title from Two Thousand Seasons (1973) by Ghanaian writer and thinker Ayi Kwei Armah, this African Film Institute program draws on the novel’s long historical horizon and its insistence on a way of living together not defined by kingdoms, nations, empires, or “great men,” but by a communitarian, mutual, life-affirming path that refuses predatory and destructive forces that continue to shape the present. Conceived as a playlist, the screening proposes a method of collective study and collaborative action. It will bring together clips, trailers, and fragments alongside complete works that point to alternative sites where memory is held and where learning is made. Read more here. 

Tuesday, January 20, 2026
George: The Story of George Maciunas and Fluxus
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George (Jurgis) Maciunas remains one of the decisive organizers of the postwar avant-garde, and also one of its hardest figures to pin down: artist, designer, publisher, ideologue, and logistical engine. Jeffrey Perkins’s film approaches Fluxus through Maciunas’s temperament and methods, assembling a portrait from interviews and archival documents in a film language that echoes Fluxus’s own sensibility. Join us for George: The Story of George Maciunas and Fluxus, a feature documentary by Jeffrey Perkins followed by the discussion. Read more here. 

Thursday, January 22, 2026
13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Séance: Technology of the Spirit catalogue launch
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For this launch event, Alexandra Munroe will be in conversation with the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale’s curators–Anton Vidokle, Hallie Ayres, and Lukas Brasiskis–to discuss the Japanese religious movement Oomoto and the work of Onisaburō Deguchi, the movement’s former spiritual leader, whose work was featured in the Biennale. The evening will be introduced by the catalogue's editor Ben Eastham and will commence with a screening of Deguchi’s Shōwa no Shichifukujin (The Seven Lucky Gods). Read more here.

Tuesday, January 27, 2026
On Richard Wright: Kazembe Balagun and John Bohn in conversation
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Despite his importance to US literature and social movement history, Richard Wright (1908–1960) has received little public attention in the era of Black Lives Matter compared to his importance among writers, artists, and activists involved in the revolutionary struggles of the 1930s and 1960s. Wright was the first best-selling Black author in the United States and an influential organizer of Black literature, mentoring and championing writers like James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, and George Lamming early in their careers. He was also a lifelong radical whose engagement with communism, Black liberation, and the anti-colonial struggle made him a target of the FBI and State Department. His most well-known novel, Native Son (1940), has, at turns, inspired readers by its honest depiction of Black rage against white supremacy, and confounded them with a seemingly pessimistic story of a blundered attempt at interracial unity. Join us a for a conversation on Wright between Kazembe Balagun, Executive Director of Maysles Documentary Center, and John Bohn, author of “Narrating Self-Abolition: On Richard Wright” published in e-flux journal issue #158. Read more here.

Thursday, January 29, 2026
Tasks, Frames, Transmissions
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Join us for a screening of seven films and videos by Richard Serra produced within the late 1960s and 1970s New York art milieu. Conceived alongside his sculptural practice yet grounded in the distinct material capacities of film and video, these works show Serra working through tightly defined set-ups, from silent 16mm films to early video. The program moves from bodily actions performed under pressure, to perception treated as something that can be measured, to the operations of transmission itself. The sequence closes with concise and critical statement on television broadcasting, delivered through the medium’s basic elements. Several works were realized in collaboration, including with Joan Jonas, Nancy Holt, and Carlota Schoolman, bringing performance, voice, and language into the videos, and underscoring how artists’ moving image of this period often took shape through shared working relationships. Read more here.

Stay tuned to upcoming programs on our website, or subscribe to our Events mailing list here.

For more information, contact program [​at​] e-flux.com.