Pandemics, populism, post-truth. Rising sea-levels and dwindling economies. SpaceX, Zoom fatigue. Smart fridges, nepobabies, Love Island. To many of us the world, our very planet, appears to be coming apart. How are we to put it back together again (and should we)? What goes where and why? In ‘The Cluster F Theory Podcast: Concepts for Catastrophic Times’, TV presenter and writer Gia Milinovich and Timotheus Vermeulen, Professor of Media, Culture and Society, consider our options.
Each week we speak to a philosopher, critical theorist, scientist, historian, academic, writer or thinker about their take on the present. Each week our guest suggests a new concept to explain the 'cluster f' that’s happening around us. This podcast won’t make you happier, more mindful or fitter. But it will… well… you’ll have spent 20 minutes caring about something other than yourself.
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The Hosts
Gia Milinovich has worked as a television and radio presenter, a film reviewer, a web producer, a new media advisor and a consultant on Hollywood films. She's interviewed a wide range of people from Hollywood luminaries, including Stephen Spielberg, Harrison Ford, Robin Williams, to technology personalities including Tim Berners-Lee, Nick Bostrom and Douglas Rushkoff.
She introduced QR codes into the UK, was the first blogger to blog the production of a Hollywood film and broadcasted the earliest pieces about netiquette, emoticons, computer addiction, transhumanism and All Your Base Are Belong To Us. She's worked for various film companies including 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight, Warner Bros, Universal Pictures and Paramount.
She recently received a UAL scholarship to do an MA in Fine Art at Central St. Martin’s, focusing on the divide between the real and the digital worlds as well as looking at the idea of ‘metamodern space’. While researching Metamodernism she started stalking Tim.
Timotheus Vermeulen is a professor of media, culture and society at the University of Oslo, Norway, and a 23/24 visiting scholar in history of art and architecture at Harvard University, USA. He is co-founder of the now defunct webzine Notes on Metamodernism and a regular contributor to frieze.
Tim is a leading theorist of contemporary culture. He has written extensively on art, screen media and aesthetics. His work on metamodernism, especially, has been cited widely, including popular media like the New York Times, LA Review of Books, TLS, BBC, Adbusters, Scenario, Vulture, and TANK; has inspired numerous symposia and exhibitions; and has been translated in over ten languages.
