Described by Pitchfork as “a maelstrom of mundane thoughts and funny asides and flashes of pure rage whipped into a heavy, unnerving fog” and by Rolling Stone as “not always enjoyable, but it’s something you feel either way,” Kim Gordon’s second solo album, The Collective, has torn into 2024 with a jarring, hypnotic fusion of trap, noise, and stream-of-consciousness spoken-word mumblings.

Given the boldness of Gordon’s latest project, the dissonant critical response it’s provoked, and the art-punk senior’s upcoming Lisbon performance, for Centro’s first Talking Circle, Double or Nothing, we will convene on October 24 from 18h to 20h to discuss the album, how it’s been reviewed by major media outlets, its aesthetics and lyrics and the politics they communicate, and debate its relevance.

Given the talking circle’s small size, space is limited. While there is no access fee for events at Centro, non-associate visitors are kindly encouraged to contribute a suggested donation of 5€. The event will be in English and reading material and refreshments will be provided. To sign up or ask for further details, please email info@aocentro.com by October 15.

It’s redundant, at this point, to state how intimately tethered to the cybersphere we are. For whatever meaningful or trivial aspect of contemporary human life—labor and commerce, relationships and sex, fitness and health, culture and entertainment—there is an app, site, or tool that promises to optimize our pursuit of it, thus maximizing our chances at self-realization. In exchange for the algorithm’s guidance, we cede data that map out our lives—our live locations, daily routines, spending habits, search histories, conversations—and thus consent to a “new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales.”

Defined by Shoshana Zuboff as “as significant a threat to human nature in the twenty-first century as industrial capitalism was to the natural world in the nineteenth and twentieth,” surveillance capitalism is establishing itself as the “dominant logic of accumulation of our age.” Given its scope, hold, and voracity, it is difficult to imagine a more relevant issue to gather around, analyze, and respond to with rigor and creativity.

For Centro’s first Talking Circle, With Our Heads in The Cloud, we will convene to discuss life under surveillance capitalism, critically engage with work by Tung-Hui Hu, Shoshana Zuboff, and others, and collectively gain practical knowledge that can help us navigate it more astutely. The series will be marked by two sessions held on consecutive Saturdays in October 2024.

Join us for a summer evening gathering to celebrate Centro’s soft opening. To break in a new space for workers throughout the cultural sector to convene and collaborate, we will host a casual reading set on Saturday, June 29, featuring writers and friends from the Lusosphere and Anglosphere. The event will begin at 17h and refreshments will be offered.