Theory Tuesdays was a nonacademic, participatory platform for theoretical discussion founded, organized and coordinated by artist Philip Matesic from 2009 until 2022 in Zurich, Switzerland. Participants read beforehand, then discussed texts about contemporary art, design, literary, cultural and critical theory. The excerpts were selected and introduced each week by a different person, along with Matesic moderating each session.

The discussions were a blend of knowing and not-knowing, being critical and playful, each one teaching the other. By being free and open to the public, the nearly weekly circulation of varying topics and presenters made it possible to simply drop in and discuss. Over a 13 year period, the 248 Theory Tuesdays sessions were held at the following locations, in and around Zürich: Corner College, Counter Space, Kunsthalle Zürich, Reseda Zürich Lochergut, Reseda Zürich am Hauptbahnhof, Atelier Hermann Haller and Villa Rigi.

ALL THEORY TUESDAYS SESSIONS (2009 - 2022)

2009
Session 1: Toward Participation in Art by Rudolf Frieling
Session 2: Boris Groys & Allan Kaprow
Session 3: Claire Bishop, Nicolas Bourriaud & Lars Bang Larsen
Session 4: Miwon Kwon & Cascoland
Session 5: Vito Acconci on Art, Architecture, Arvada and Storefront by Tom Finkelpearl & Social Acupuncture by Darren O’ Donnell
Session 6: Artist talk with Saskia de Brauw (NL)
Session 7: Film - On the Passage of a Few People through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: The Situationist International 1956-1972 & La Société du spectacle
Session 8: Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century by Greil Marcus
Session 9: Ästhetik der Interpassivität by Robert Pfaller
Session 10: Art As Experience by John Dewey
Session 11: Film - Back to Fucking Cambridge by Otto Mühl & Terese Panoutsopoulos
Session 12: Altermodern (Tate Triennial exhibition catalogue) curated by Nicolas Bourriaud

2010
Session 13: Dada Historical Review (Part I) at Cabaret Voltaire
Session 14: Dada Historical Review (Part II) at Cabaret Voltaire
Session 15: The Ends of Exile: Toward A Coming Universality by T.J. Demos & Modernity and Postcolonial Ambivalence by Okwui Enwezor
Session 16: The Artist as Ethnographer? & Design and Crime by Hal Foster
Session 17: Inside The White Cube & Studio And Cube by Brian O’Doherty
Session 18: Migrants of Identity by Nigel Rapport & Andrew Dawson
Session 19: Paragraphs on Conceptual Art by Sol LeWitt & The Challenge of Conceptual Art by Peter Goldie & Elisabeth Schellekens
Session 20: Foksal Gallery and the Notion of Archive: Between Inventory and Place by Pawel Polit
Session 21: Celebration at Persepolis by Michael Stevenson
Session 22: Artist talk with Nic Hess (DE)
Session 23: What’s In A Voice? by Mladen Dolar
Session 24: On the Relationship Between the Art Public and the Counterpublic by Marion von Osten
Session 25: The Fracturing of Globalization by Julian Stallabrass & Acting Out in the City by Hou Hanru
Session 26: Visiting artist talk with Lada Nakonechna (UA)
Session 27: Design Thinking or Critical Design? by Rick Poynor & Middle Culture by Camiel van Winkel
Session 28: Film - Die Ameise der Kunst von Peter Sempel mit Jonathan Meese & Blixa Bargeld
Session 29: Oswald de Andrade’s Cannibalist Manifesto by Leslie Bary & Anthropophagic Subjectivity by Suely Rolnik
Session 30: Film - Wide Details: On The Traces Of Francis Alÿs by Julien Devaux
Session 31: The Uses of Disorder: Joe Scanlan on the art of Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Session 32: Film - Here is Always Somewhere Else: The Disappearance of Bas Jan Ader
Session 33: Danh Vo in Conversation with Dominic Eichler interview
Session 34: Artist talk with Chris Tourre (US)
Session 35: Blows Against the Empire by Ted Purves
Session 36: Having Been Said: Writings & Interviews of Lawrence Weiner
Session 37: Platzt der Kunst das Herz? Gespräche mit Daniel Binswanger
Session 38: The Conspiracy of Art by Jean Baudrillard
Session 39: Artist talk with Jana Stepanova (CZ)
Session 40: Artist talk with Antoni Wojtyra (CA)
Session 41: Digital Folklore edited by Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied
Session 42: Film - Jenny Holzer by Claudia Mueller
Session 43: Schenkepisoden with Manuel Hartmann (AT)
Session 44: Temporality and Public Art by Patrica C. Phillips
Session 45: Commons-Based Peer Production with Elizeu Santos-Neto (BR)
Session 46: Film - Surrealism selection
Session 47: The Age of Semi-Post-Postmodernism by Ben Davis & Postmodernism and Consumer Society by Fredric Jameson

2011
Session 48: Field notes from Manifesta 8 with Daniela
Session 49: The Nightmare of Participation by Markus Miessen
Session 50: Film - Soviet Avant-Garde Cinema selection
Session 51: The Experience of Art as a Living Through of Language by Kate Love
Session 52: Nelson Goodman & Catherine Elgin
Session 53: The Colour of Beauty by John O’ Donohue
Session 54: Thinking About The Public In Public Art & Agility in Public Interviews
Session 55: Dispersion by Seth Price
Session 56: Films - The Art of Survival: The Story of Tim Rollins & K.O.S. & A State of Agreement
Session 57: Derrida, An Egyptian by Peter Sloterdijk (Part I)
Session 58: Derrida, An Egyptian by Peter Sloterdijk (Part II)
Session 59: Film - Derrida by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering
Session 60: Between Zones. On the Representation of the Performative and the Notation of Movement
Session 61: Artist talk with Nicole Bachmann (CH)
Session 62: The Emancipated Spectator by Jacques Ranciere
Session 63: The Aesthetic Critique of Judgment by Christoph Menke
Session 64: Exhibition discussion - Language/Standards/Objects
Session 65: First Person, Second Person, Same Person by Mieke Bal
Session 66: The Radicant by Nicolas Bourriaud
Session 67: Field notes from Slow Days Oslo with Daniel & Philip
Session 68: What Is Critical Urban Theory? by Neil Brenner & Junkspace by Rem Koolhaas
Session 69: What Does Public Mean? Art as a participant in the Public Arena edited by Tone Hansen
Session 70: Thoughts from Curator V by Markús Thór Andrésson
Session 71: Film - Jacques Tati selection
Session 72: The Exhibitionist curatorial magazine
Session 73: Aesthetic Sovereignty by Christoph Menke
Session 74: Living in the Loop by Diedrich Diederichsen
Session 75: The Café Society Part I
Session 76: The Café Society Part II
Session 77: Play-Mobile public art project
Session 78: Quality Time: Social Practice Debates in Contemporary Art by Shannon Jackson
Session 79: Film - Santiago Sierra episode on Art Safari by Ben Lewis

2012
Session 80: Artist talk with Róza El Hassan (HU)
Session 81: See it Again, Say it Again: The Artist as Researcher edited by Janneke Wesseling
Session 82: Space – Place – Society: Are we all suburbanized? (Robert Fishman, Thomas Sieverts & Walter Prigge)
Session 83: Film - Un Homme Qui Dort by Georges Perec & Bernard Queysanne
Session 84: Applied Social Arts by Artur Żmijewski
Session 85: Writing the Self: Of Diaries and Weblogs by José van Dijck
Session 86: Artistic Research (James Elkins & Isabelle Graw)
Session 87: A Productive Irritant: Parasitical Inhabitations in Contemporary Art by Post Brothers & Chris Fitzpatrick
Session 88: Robinson in Ruins by Patrick Keiller
Session 89: Film - Exit Through The Gift Shop by Banksy
Session 90: The Body as a Medium: Switzerland’s Performance Network by Rayelle Niemann
Session 91: Art and the City public art projects in Zürich
Session 92: Liste 16: Absolute Art Space by Edith Jud
Session 93: On Beyond Research and New Knowledge by James Elkins
Session 94: Under the Gaze of Theory by Boris Groys
Session 95: Bulletins of the Serving Library by Dexter Sinister
Session 96: Field notes from Manifesta 9 & The Paris Triennale with Olga
Session 97: Film - Dieter Roth by Edith Jud
Session 98: Are You Working Too Much? edited by Julieta Aranda, Anton Vidokle & Brian Kuan Wood
Session 99: The Art World Establishment (to varying degrees) with Linda Jensen
Session 100: 3-Years / 100 Sessions Theory Tuesdays celebration
Session 101: Film - Paul Sharits selection
Session 102: Film - Calder’s Circus by Carlos Vilardebó

2013
Session 103: Starting from Work by Christian Marazzi
Session 104: Molecular Revolutions and Desire is Power, Power is Desire by Félix Guattari & transverse by Bifo – Franco Berardi
Session 105: tainted love: art’s ethos and capitalization by suhail malik and andrea philips
Session 106: Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? by Bruno Latour
Session 107: Digital Divide by Claire Bishop
Session 108: Bürger erhebt euch!: Postdemokratie, Neoliberalismus und ziviler Ungehorsam bei Markus Metz & Georg Seesslen
Session 109: Everything is in Everything: Jacques Rancière between Intellectual Emancipation and Aesthetic Education
Session 110: Solution 196–213: United States of Palestine-Israel edited by Joshua Simon
Session 111: Film - Male Performers and Drag Persona selection
Session 112: Open Call: Art, Democracy and the Culture of Consensus by David Geers
Session 113: The People’s Library at the Public Museum a project by Matthias Neumann
Session 114: The Creation of the Urban Commons by David Harvey
Session 115: Film - The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema by Sophie Fiennes with Slavoj Žižek
Session 116: Print-Renaissance with Mara Züst
Session 117: Style Writing by Scum, Cheech H and Techno 169
Session 118: Collective Desire and the Pathology of the Individual by Jodi Dean
Session 119: Torrent magazine with Linda Jensen
Session 120: Film - The Beauty of My Island - Shooting Klaus Lutz by Frank Matter

2014
Session 121: Radical Museology, or, What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art? by Claire Bishop
Session 122: OnCurating magazine - (New) Institution(alism)
Session 123: Cultural Logic of Criticality by Marina Vishmidt
Session 124: The Labor of the Inhuman, Part I: Human & Contingency and Complicity by Reza Negarestani
Session 125: 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep by Jonathan Crary
Session 126: Fighting Total Surveillance with the Laws of Man by Julian Assange & Bioterror by Philipp Sarasin
Session 127: Film - Jeff Keen selection
Session 128: Searching for Art’s New Publics edited by Jeni Walwin
Session 129: Conceptual Art 1962-1969: From the Aesthetics of Administration to the Critique of Institutions by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh
Session 130: DEVORATION by FUZI-UVTPK
Session 131: PRESENT SHOCK: When Everything Happens Now by Douglas Rushkoff
Session 132: Film - Profondo Rosso by Dario Argento
Session 133: ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound
Session 134: 5 Years / 133 Sessions performance by Daniel and Philip

2015
Session 134: After Theory by Terry Eagleton
Session 135: Forensic Architecture by Eyal Weizman, Material Witness by David Joselit & The Civil Contract of Photography by Ariella Azoulay
Session 136: The Artist’s Contract by Seth Siegelaub
Session 137: Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture by Gregory Sholette
Session 138: A Rhetoric of Irony by Wayne C. Booth
Session 139: Marcel Duchamp and The Refusal of Work by Maurizio Lazzarato
Session 140: Transparenzgesellschaft by Byung-Chul Han
Session 141: Selected Writings by Robert Smithson
Session 142: Un-War: An Aesthetic Sketch by Rosalyn Deutsche
Session 143: Declaration Of Dependence by Laura McLean-Ferris
Session 144: Der Glanz des Materials. Zur Kritik der ästhetischen Ökonomie by Gernot Böhme
Session 145: Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees by Robert Irwin & Lawrence Weschler
Session 146: Drone Theory by Gregoire Chamayou
Session 147: Beer, Art and Philosophy: A Memoir by Tom Marioni
Session 148: Rational Authority and Social Power: Towards a Truly Social Epistemology by Miranda Fricker
Session 149: Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society by Raymond Williams
Session 150: Bomb The Suburbs by William Upski Wimsatt
Session 151: Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World by Barbara Ehrenreich
Session 152: Boring Formless Nonsense by Eldritch Priest

2016
Session 153: Design For The Real World by Victor Papanek
Session 154: Culture Class by Martha Rosler
Session 155: Kollaboration by Mark Terkessidis
Session 156: History of Shit by Dominique Laporte
Session 157: Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden von Heinrich von Kleist (1807)
Session 158: Hinter weißen Wänden: Behind the White Cube by Julia Voss
Session 159: Das Theorem der Neuen Landnahme: Eine feministische Rückeroberung by Die Feministische Autorinnengruppe
Session 160: Reclaiming Animism by Isabelle Stengers
Session 161: Chaos in Poetry by D.H. Lawrence
Session 162: Seeing Through Police by Mark Greif
Session 163: The Parasite by Michel Serres
Session 164: Passivität by Kathrin Busch
Session 165: Social Media: Practices of (In)Visibility in Contemporary Art by Sven Lütticken
Session 166: Empire Poetry by Dena Yago
Session 167: Schneller als die Sonne von Hans-Christian Dany

2017
Session 168: Selbst von Thomas Meinecke
Session 169: The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han
Session 170: Fixing One’s Eyes On A Model by Francois Jullien
Session 171: Can Jokes Bring Down Goverments? by Metahaven
Session 172: Pornotopia: Architektur, Sexualität und Multimedia im ‘Playboy' von Beatriz Preciado
Session 173: The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
Session 174: Von Jetzt An Werde Ich Mehrere Sein von Eva Meyer
Session 175: Tell Them I Said No by Martin Herbert
Session 176: Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution by Andrew Boyd
Session 177: Der Eindringling von Jean-Luc Nancy
Session 178: Scandalous: A Reader on Art and Ethics edited by Nina Möntmann
Session 179: The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula Le Guin
Session 180: Essayism by Brian Dillon
Session 181: Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
Session 182: Undeclared War: Violence Against Women by Silvia Federici
Session 183: The Posthuman by Rosi Braidotti
Session 184: Arts Education Beyond Art edited by Barend van Heusden & Pascal Gielen
Session 185: Remembering in Art: The Horizontal and the Vertical by Siri Hustvedt
Session 186: How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later by Philip K. Dick
Session 187: The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray

2018
Session 188: The Refusal of Work by David Frayne
Session 189: Die lange Nacht der Metamorphose von Guillaume Paoli
Session 190: On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt
Session 191: Vampyroteuthis Infernalis by Vilém Flusser & Louis Bec
Session 192: Hal Foster & Timothy Brennan
Session 193: Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
Session 194: Curatorial Activism by Maura Reilly
Session 195: Das Spielelement der Kultur von Johan Huizinga
Session 196: What is a Classic? by J.M. Coetzee
Session 197: Enclosure by Gary Fields & This Land Is Your Land by Raja Shehadeh
Session 198: Solution 275-294 – Communists Anonymous edited by Joshua Simon & Ingo Niermann
Session 199: The Garden of Merging Paths by Rebecca Solnit
Session 200: Georgian tradition of ceremonial toasting (‘supra’) celebration
Session 201: Treffpunkt im Unendlichen. Das Problem mit der Indentität von Kokoscha Linkerhands
Session 202: Das Ornament der Masse von Siegfried Kracauer & Der Horror, Vacui von Colin Lang
Session 203: Wars and Capital by Éric Alliez & Maurizio Lazzarato
Session 204: Robots Should Be Slaves by Joanna J. Bryson
Session 205: Das Manifest für Gefährten von Donna Haraway
Session 206: Pädagogik der Unterdrückten von Paulo Freire
Session 207: Cosmic Pessimism by Eugene Thacker

2019
Session 208: 4.0 oder Die Lücke die der Rechner lässt von Dirk Baecker
Session 209: Mythen des Alltags von Roland Barthes
Session 210: Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht von Susan Arndt & Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard
Session 211: Unlearning Decisive Moments of Photography by Ariella Azoulay
Session 212: Der Mensch ohne Inhalt von Giorgio Agamben
Session 213: Blutsbande von Christina von Braun
Session 214: Future Imperfect by Jan Cohen-Cruz, Elizabeth M. Grady & Grant Kester
Session 215: Das hässliche Universum von Sabine Hossenfelder
Session 216: Geschlecht oder Kopf? von Hélène Cixous
Session 217: MTV’s Jackass: Transgression, Abjection and the Economy of White Masculinity by Sean Brayton
Session 218: Subjekt und Macht von Michel Foucault
Session 219: Der Mensch und die Technik von Nikolai A. Berdiajew
Session 220: Nuart journal, Issue II: Eloquent Vandals
Session 221: Die Sprache der Dinge, Eine materialistische Sicht auf dokumentarische Praxen von Hito Steyerl
Session 222: Brücke und Tür von Georg Simmel
Session 223: Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher
Session 224: Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent by Saba Mahmood
Session 225: Allianzen. Kritische Praxis an weißen Institutionen edited by Elisa Liepsch, Julian Warner & Matthias Pees
Session 226: Arts in Place by Cara Courage
Session 227: Colonizing Egypt by Timothy Mitchell

2020
Session 228: Living with Ghosts by Jan Verwoert
Session 229: Why Marx Was Right by Terry Eagleton
Session 230: A Brief Glossary of Social Sadism” by Ana Teixeira Pinto & Kerstin Stakemeier
Session 231: STRING FIGURES von Jenny Schäfer
Session 232: Labours of Love by Danielle Child, Helena Reckitt & Jenny Richards
Session 233: Strike Art by Yates McKee
Session 234: Lyophilia & FAST DUMM von Ann Cotten
Session 235: Lonely by Emily White
Session 236: The Art of Discrimination by Helmut Draxler
Session 237: White Girls by Hilton Als
Session 238: Das terrestrische Manifest von Bruno Latour

2021
Session 239: Verlernen von Marie Luise Knott
Session 240: Geschichte(n) des Kunststreiks von Sofia Bempeza
Session 241: The Selfishness of Others by Kristin Dombek
Session 242: Gesichtserkennung von Roland Meyer
Session 243: Kultur und Identität von Édouard Glissant
Session 244: One Number Is Worth One Word by Luis Camnitzer

2022
Session 245: D.H. Lawrence on Edgar Allan Poe
Session 246: Contemporary Art Writing Daily on Ed Atkins’s 'The worm'
Session 247: The Brutish Museums by Dan Hicks
Session 248: A Savage Performance by Diana Taylor