RiVAL Radio RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab

A wide-ranging conversation with Aleena Chia about the labour of fans, the joys of rabbit-holing, con/spirituality communities and the importance of democratic engagement.

Aleena Chia is Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University and incoming Lecturer of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. She researches cultures of creativity such as automation in digital game production, lucid dreaming in Consciousness Hacking communities of practice, and wellness ideologies in social media disconnection. She is co-author of TechnoPharmacology (University of Minnesota Press/ Meson Press, forthcoming) and has published in journals such as the Journal of Fandom Studies and Television and New Media. - http://aleenachia.org/

For more information about the podcast visit http://conspiracy.games

A feminist care conspiracy? An artwork transmogrified into a world-wide secret society? A free anti-capitalist social technology? A revolutionary pyramid scheme? Cassie Thornton shares The Hologram project: a ferminist, peer-to-peer social technology for collective health and rebellion (thehologram.xyz).

Cassie Thornton (feministeconomicsdepartment.com) is an artist and activist who makes a “safe space” for the unknown, for disobedience, and for unanticipated collectivity. She uses social practices including institutional critique, insurgent architecture, and “healing modalities” like hypnosis and yoga to find soft spots in the hard surfaces of capitalist life. Cassie has invented a grassroots alternative credit reporting service for the survivors of gentrification, has hypnotized hedge fund managers, has finger-painted with the grime found inside banks, has donated cursed paintings to profiteering bankers, and has taught feminist economics to yogis (and vice versa). Her new book, The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future, is available from Pluto Press (https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745343327/the-hologram). She is currently the co-director of the Re-Imagining Value Action Lab (reimaginingvalue.ca) in Thunder Bay, an art and social centre at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada.

A wide-ranging conversation with acclaimed and bestselling author, essayist and podcaster Hari Kunzru centring on his 2020 novel *Red Pill*.

Born in London, Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men, and White Tears, as well as a short story collection, Noise and a novella, Memory Palace. His new novel Red Pill was published in September 2020. He is an honorary fellow of Wadham College Oxford, and has received fellowships from the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy in Berlin. He is the host of the podcast Into The Zone, from Pushkin Industries. He lives in New York City.

We are caught between two wars of restoration: the far-right, seeking to return us to a fabled past and a liberal capitalist "centre" demanding more business as usual. Between these two, dark new "conspiracy theories" breed, especially among men, which reinforce the worst of patriarchy, with deadly effect...

Jack Bratich is professor of Journalism and Media Studies at the Rutgers School of Communications and Information. His research focuses on themes including the interface of political culture and popular culture, conspiracy panics, surveillance, journalism, activism, and the production of truth. He is author of Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture (2008).

How have governments and other powerful forces conspired against Black people in "North America" since the colonial invasion? How are fears about conspiracy theorizies displaced onto Black and racialized people? How do we separate the real conspiratorial functions of power from dangerous conspiracy fantasies?

El Jones is a poet, journalist, professor and abolitionist activist living in K'jipuktuk (Halifax, Canada). She is a two-time Canadian national spoken word champion and served as Halifax's poet laureate from 2013-15.

We speak to Brian van Slyke of the TESA Collective about how board games have become an important part of the social movement ecosystem and what it takes to design a game that contributes to today's struggles for racial, social and economic justice.

The TESA Collective is a 10-year old worker cooperative that designs and manufactures games for social movements. Their most recent game, “STRIKE! The Game of Worker Rebellion,” builds on a long legacy including “Space Cats Fight Fascism”, “Rise Up: The Game of People & Power”, and “Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives.” Brian Van Slyke is a co-founder, lead designer and head of games for the collective.