The Law of Capital: Histories of Oppression, an exhibition and symposium conceived by Marina Grzinic and Sebastjan Leban, researches and addresses the contemporary and historical role of capital in (de)regulating all social processes. The project highlights the development of a discursive/intervention platform among art, theory, philosophy and activism in order to fight racism, homophobic normalities, exploitation, expropriation and effects of colonialism. It presents a critical intervention in the structure of contemporary capitalist societies and aims to expose social inequalities, contemporary forms of colonization, commodification, marginalization of various sexual and ethnic groups, and the enduring capitalist exploitation of the mass population.

Jonathan Beller is Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at The Pratt Institute. His work in media theory explores the relationship between the rise of visuality and the expansion of capital and capitalist exploitation – specifically how media technologies industrialize vision and the sensorium. His most recent books are The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle (2006) and Acquiring Eyes: Philippine Visuality, Nationalist Struggle and the World-Media System (2006). His current book projects are The Tortured Signifier: Signs of the State of Exception and Aesthetics, Affect, Asia (with Neferti Tadiar).

Marina Grzinic is a philosopher, artist and theoretician. She works in Ljubljana and Vienna. She is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the Scientific and Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art (ZRC-SAZU), Ljubljana, and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She also works as freelance media theorist, art critic and curator. Grzinic published several books (in French, English, Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian) her last book is Re-Politicizing Art, Theory, Representation and New Media Technology, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna and Schlebrügge, Editor, Vienna 2008. She is one of the co-founders and co-editors of the journal Reartikulacija, Ljubljana. Grzinic has been involved with video art since 1982. In collaboration with Aina Smid, Grzinic realized more than 40 video art projects.

Besnik Pula is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology of the University of Michigan and an adjunct instructor in the Department of Politics at New York University. His research includes questions of state building, intellectual discourse, civil society, and international intervention and administration in the Balkans. He has published scholarly articles on the topics of nationalism, colonial urbanism, and empire. His dissertation examines questions of state formation and law. He is also a frequent contributor to the Kosovo press. In addition to his research, Besnik is active in projects that aim to regenerate theoretical reflection and critical analysis of contemporary and historical social and political processes in Kosovo and the Balkans region, particularly as seen in a broader comparative and global framework. These activities are mainly carried out through groups such as the former Department for Social Critique and the Research Group in Sociology in Philosophy based in Prishtina, of which he is a founding member. He has also worked with a number of other artistic, research, and activist organizations in Kosovo and Albania.

Neferti X. M. Tadiar is Professor and Chair of Women’s Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her work is on the role of cultural practice and social imagination in the production of wealth, power, marginality and liberatory movements in the context of global relations, with a focus on contemporary Philippine and Filipino cultures and their relation to political and economic change. She is the author of Things Fall Away: Philippine Historical Experience and the Makings of Globalization (Duke University Press, 2009) and Fantasy-Production: Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Consequences in the New World Order (Hong Kong University Press/ Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2004). Her current book projects are Discourse on Empire: Becoming Human in a Time of War and Aesthetics, Affect, Asia (with Jonathan L. Beller).