Conference
09.05.2026
17:00
gnration (blackbox)
Moderated by: Nora O’ Murchú
Free
This conference takes place in English
©Z Walsh
McKenzie Wark’s incisive perspective has been fundamental to understanding the relationships between power, technology, and art over the past two decades. For this session at INDEX, the author raises the possibility of the existence of “a new kind of ruling class”. According to Wark, it is not only time to ask whether this emerging ruling class is destabilizing the institutional commitments that social movements imposed on the old ruling class, but also what tactics might be mobilized against it and what role art might play in this context. Moderating this conversation will be Irish curator and writer Nora O’Murchú.
McKenzie Wark
McKenzie Wark is a professor of Cultural and Media Studies at a university in New York. She is best known for a series of books on 21st-century critical theory, including “The Hacker Manifesto”, “Gamer Theory”, and “Capital is Dead”. She has also written works that contribute to an alternative history of Marxism, including “Leaving the Twentieth Century” and “Molecular Red,” as well as “General Intellects” and “Sensoria.” She also adopts an auto-theoretical style in books such as “Dispositions,” “Philosophy for Spiders,” “Raving,” and “Love and Money, Sex and Death.”
Nora O’ Murchú
Nora O’Murchú is an Irish curator, writer, professor, and researcher whose work examines how digital infrastructures shape culture, politics, and collective life. Her practice addresses the ontology of computing, tracing how technical systems organize power, extract value, and shape social and affective experience. From 2020 to 2024, she served as Artistic Director of transmediale in Berlin, where she developed a curatorial framework encompassing exhibitions, publications, and public programs.