EventsThe New Social Environment#1354
After ZIRP: Fiction, Mediation, and the Formation of Subjects
Featuring David Muenzer, Aliza Shvarts, Liz Magic Laser, and Alex Kitnick
Thursday, May 7, 2026 1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific
These free events are produced by The Brooklyn Rail.
Artists Liz Magic Laser, David Muenzer, and Aliza Shvarts join art critic Alex Kitnick for a conversation on Zoom on the cultural afterlives of the zero interest rate period (2008–2015).
In this Talk
During the zero interest rate period (2008–2015), conditions of cheap money and speculative growth reorganized not only financial systems but also the production and circulation of images, identities, and narratives. Cultural forms, whether artworks or online personae, were increasingly compelled to operate as assets within accelerated cycles of attention, valuation, and obsolescence.
Taking this period as a point of departure, the discussion will consider how ZIRP reshaped the political valence of fiction. What forms of mediation emerged under these conditions, and how do they persist now that the economic structures that sustained them have shifted?
Liz Magic Laser
Liz Magic Laser is a New York-born multimedia video artist whose work extends into performance, sculpture, and installation. Her projects trace the aesthetics and theatricality of power, how authority is rehearsed and performed across political, corporate, journalistic, and medical systems. Her ongoing installation cycle Convulsive States explores hysteria, Jean-Martin Charcot, and the entanglement of performance with the early histories of psychiatry and neurology. The project has been presented in various forms at Pioneer Works, Tate Modern, STUK, The Watermill Center, the Denver Art Museum, and the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière, where the central film was shot. Sternberg Press published her monograph Public Relations/ Offentlichkeitsarbeit in 2014.
David Muenzer
Photo credit: Buck Ellison
David Muenzer is an artist who investigates value systems through drawing, materially distinctive sculpture, and novel protocols for exhibition-making. Recent solos include Final Hot Desert, London (2025), Soldes, Los Angeles (2024), and Dracula’s Revenge, New York (2022). Group exhibitions include Los Angeles City College, Los Angeles; The Drawing Center, New York; C.C.C. Gallery, Copenhagen; Lubov, New York; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Bel Ami, Los Angeles; La Maison de Rendez-Vous, Brussels; Balice Hertling, Paris; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. His work has appeared in Artforum, The New York Times, the Brooklyn Rail, Frieze, Flash Art, and 4Columns, among others.
Aliza Shvarts
Aliza Shvarts is an artist and theorist who takes a queer and feminist approach to reproductive labor and language. Her work came to international attention in 2008 when she was an undergraduate at Yale and the university censored her thesis, which dealt with self-managed abortion. Shvarts' artwork has been exhibited internationally, and her writing and interviews have appeared in October, e-flux, the Brooklyn Rail, and more. She's been a Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies at the Whitney ISP, an A.I.R. Artist Fellow, and Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grantee. Shvarts holds a PhD in Performance Studies from NYU. She is Director of the Low-Residency MFA Program and Assistant Professor of Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).
Alex Kitnick
Alex Kitnick is Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. His book Distant Early Warning: Marshall McLuhan and the Transformation of the Avant-Garde was published by University of Chicago Press in 2021. His criticism appears in publications ranging from October to May.
We’d like to thank The Marion Boulton Kippy Stroud Foundation and Teiger Foundation for making these conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive 🌈✨