All this global dysphoria
Legacy Russell returns to poetry with GAY POMPEII, a collection of lyric poems that begin at the end of the world. The author and curator explores ash, filth, dirt, and decay, intersectional with the fetishistic mythos of Pompeii and its destruction in 79 CE by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Pompeii today is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that receives over two million visitors per year to view its archaeological excavation. Russell puts the mass voyeurism, sensation, extraction, and loss of Pompeii-a devastating moment frozen in time-to work. In GAY POMPEII, the site becomes a device with which Russell unspools birth, death, genocide, visual culture, and space-time. The title of this compilation underscores the essence and demand of capitalism: to be carefree in the face of looming extinction. Russell's GAY POMPEII is a selfie taken at the edge of catastrophe and a polyphonic elegy.
This return to Pompeii is also a return to one of the foundational sites of the culture of conservation and heritage that underpins the modern concept of the museum. The poetry reading will provide the framework for a conversation about the role of artistic institutions at the edge of catastrophe and their capacity to intervene in political life. Legacy Russell will address this question from her experience as Executive Director of The Kitchen, the 50-years-old experimental art institution in New York.
*The conversations will be held in English and subtitled in Catalan
Legacy Russell
Legacy Russell is a curator and writer. Born and raised in New York City, she is the Executive Director & Chief Curator of the experimental arts institution The Kitchen. Formerly, she was the Associate Curator of Exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Russell holds an MRes with Distinction in Art History from Goldsmiths, University of London, with a focus in Visual Culture. Her academic, curatorial, and creative work focuses on gender, performance, digital selfdom, internet idolatry, and new media ritual. Russell's written work, interviews, and essays have been published internationally.
Sara Nadal-Melsió
Sara Nadal-Melsió, former ISP Associate Director, is a Catalan writer, curator, and educator committed to collaborative thinking, alternative literacies, and collective learning practices. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, New York University, SOMA in Mexico City, and The Birkbeck Humanities Institute for the Humanities, and continues to teach at EinaIdea in Barcelona. She has also been a writer-in-residence at the Slought Foundation/Public Trust in Philadelphia. Her essays have appeared in various academic journals, edited volumes, and museum catalogues. Nadal-Melsió is the co-author of Alrededor de/ Around (Gustavo Gili, 2003) and the editor of The Invisible Tradition: Avant-Garde Catalan Cinema under Late Francoism and The Militant Image: Temporal Disturbances of the Political Imagination. To accompany a survey exhibition on Allora & Calzadilla that she co-curated at the Fundació Tápies in Barcelona, Nadal-Melsió wrote the book essay To Be All Ears, To Be in the World: Acoustic Relation in Allora & Calzadilla and edited a companion volume on the Puerto Rican crisis, A Modest Proposal: Puerto Rico's Crucible. Most recently, she is the co-author (with Eduardo Cadava) of Politically Red (MIT, 2023) and the author of Europe and the Wolf: Political Variations on a Musical Figure (Zone Books, 2025). In the spring, she will hold the Edith Kreeger Wolf Visiting Professorship in the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University.
Duration
1 hour 30 minutes
Dates
Sunday 8th of February 2026 from 15.00 to 16.30h
Price
Advance tickets
Morning sessions (Seeds of futurity + Love and indigeneity in a time of algorithmic debris): 4€, reduced 3€ (library card or Friends of the Fundació)
Afternoon session (All this global dysphoria): 4€, reduced 3€
Full day with lunch included: 9€
Tickets at the door
Morning sessions (Seeds of futurity + Love and indigeneity in a time of algorithmic debris): 5€, reduced 4€
Afternoon session (All this global dysphoria): 5€, reduced 4€
