Geoffrey Mak+

Geoffrey Mak values how this work opened doors for students and taught them that they do not need to follow standard story arcs.

Geoffrey Mak praises this book for its accurate tracking of American stagnation and the socio-political conditions of the current era.

“I read Ross Douthat’s The Age of Decadence, which is honestly pretty good, where he tracks that America’s decadence—our era of stagnation and forever times of late capitalism—has, like Weimar Germany, created the conditions for fascism to strike.”

Geoffrey Mak values this work for its intellectual depth and references it to contextualize his appreciation for the artist's legacy.

Geoffrey Mak values this work for its profound philosophical framework on how mourning serves as a political act in response to systemic state failure.

“Mourning, the psychological and social process through which the loss of another is publicly and privately recognized, is perhaps the most obvious instance of our vulnerability and, thus, our human condition.”

Geoffrey Mak values this work for providing the terminology of 'format' to explain gender as an organizing principle.

“gender isn’t so much of a form as a format.”

Geoffrey Mak recommends this work for its foundational role in establishing a secular defense of democracy and modern aesthetics.

“Critique of Judgment not only invented modern aesthetics that has more or less remained uncontested for two-hundred years, it was a theory of authority.”

Geoffrey Mak values this book as a source of joy that helps navigate the abyss of the afternoon.

“switch rooms and pick up a story from Dennis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, and turn wild and delirious with wicked wonder and glee.”

Geoffrey Mak values this work as a spiritual inspiration for Dean’s recurring use of mountains.

“a group of spiritual seekers set out in a boat called The Impossible to find an invisible mountain, whose existence is told only through myth.”

Geoffrey Mak values this work for demonstrating that narratives can be satisfying based on epiphanies rather than change.

Geoffrey Mak values this exhibition because it demonstrates how to reject the self-employed freelancer model in favor of non-hierarchical, collective-led artistic production.

“all executive decisions were made collectively. This was an explicit rejection to the dominant mode of contemporary art: the artist as self-employed freelancer”