In a time where authoritarian policies advance unchallenged across the globe, adopting this virus as their Trojan horse, Jean-Marie Straub’s La France contre les robots (2020) is an ode to resistance. Dedicated to Jean-Luc Godard and made publicly available this week, Straub’s latest work is a despairing yet hopeful reflection on all forms of dictatorship.

NOW INSTANT presents Serpent Rain (2016) is a collaboration between artist Arjuna Neuman and philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva commissioned by Stefano Harney for Bergen Assembly. Neuman and Ferreira da Silva ask what becomes of the human if expressed by the elements.

Artist-filmmaker Ayo Akingbade’s short film Street 66 (2018) about the late Dora Boatemah, a South London housing activist, is showing online with Le Cinéma Club. Akingbade’s film takes a retrospective look at the influence of Boatemah on the regeneration of Angell Town estate in Brixton. Street 66 is part of a trilogy of films looking at social housing including Tower XYZ (2016) and Dear Babylon (2019).

Indebted to Queers Read This, initially scheduled for early April at the ICA, host Isabel Waidner is sharing exciting new writing by Glasgow-based Shola von Reinhold. Piquant prose details a hotel tryst in this short story stuffed with rococo detailing – a welcome escape in homely times. The writer’s debut novel LOTE, exploring aesthetics, beauty and the removal of Black figures from history, was published by Jacaranda books last month.

    

Our friends over at e-flux started ‘Letters against Separation’. We might now be physically distant but yet so close, how to better express our solidarity than through a letter. Here, a link to the letter sent by the artist duo Claire Fontaine, named after, how fittingly, the French notebook and letter paper manufacturer. They are currently based in Italy.

This in conversation with Farzana Khan, co-founder of Healing Justice London, and Dr Azeezat Johnson, postdoctoral fellow at Queen Mary University of London, explores how in moments of chaos and uncertainty, we can practice be-ing, rest, and receptivity without shame, guilt, or fear. It’s the second in a series of events with Khan and Johnson discussing and sharing on sickness, mourning, grief, healing, and hope. Each session aims to provide nourishment and community care.

       Let Our Doing Come From Our Be-ing is tonight at 7:30pm. Questions for Khan and Johnson can be submitted in advance via email and Instagram.