This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our supporters on Patreon and by Verso Books,

which has loads of great left-wing titles, perfect for dig listeners like you.

One that you might like is duty-free art, art in the age of planetary civil war, by Hito Styrl.

What is the function of art in the era of digital globalization?

How can one think of art institutions in an age defined by planetary civil war,

growing inequality, and proprietary digital technology?

The boundaries of such institutions have grown fuzzy. They extend from a region where the

audience is pumped for tweets to a future of neurocurating, in which paintings surveil their

audience via facial recognition and eye tracking to assess their popularity and to scan for suspicious

activity.

In duty-free art, filmmaker and writer, Hito Styrl wonders how we can appreciate or even make art in the present age.

What can we do when arms manufacturers sponsor museums and some of the world's most valuable artworks are used as currency in a global

futures market detached from productive work. Can we distinguish between information,

fake news, and the digital white noise that bombards our everyday lives? Exploring subjects as diverse

as video games, WikiLeaks files, the proliferation of free ports and political actions.

She exposes the paradoxes within globalization, political economies, visual culture, and the status of art production.

Duty-free art, art in the age of planetary civil war by Hito Styrill.

Out now from Verso Books.

Welcome to The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin magazine.

My name is Daniel Denver, and I'm broadcasting from Providence, Rhode Island.

Martin Luther King is often remembered for his soaring oratory, but the commonplace emphasis on his rhetoric in place of his ideas, too often allows enemies of King's agenda to domesticate him,

or, worse, to weaponize his taken out of context words to bolster the very forces of racism

...