As the corporate context increasingly annexes and empties art's critical status, the titling of a recent exhibition at Bloomberg, No, Future, ironically suggests that relationship may have already 'peaked'. Peter Suchin reviews

Saint Petersburg is besieged by elite-backed architectural mega-projects and micro-interventions. Dmitry Vorobyev and Thomas Campbell describe the dominant strains of 'renovation' and the popular resistance to them arguing that, in St. Petersburg, class conflict takes the form of opposed visions of urban renewal and historic preservation

Jaya Klara Brekke talks to four UK based groups working to improve conditions for migrants and asks ‘how does one organise in the dark?’

THREE TALKS BY LOREN GOLDNER
London, Jan 19th, 21st and 22nd, 2008

New York-based Marxist Loren Goldner is giving a series of talks in London this month, hosted by Mute magazine [http://metamute.org]

In Mute 2.6 fictitious capital collided with hypermetrical verse distemper[*].  What follows makes matters worse by further entangling these things with forthcoming Mute subject matter: baby biometrics, tax credit tagging for Hard To Let Families, etc.

Ironic distance is ambiguous. It grounds both critique and detached resignation to the status quo. What becomes of it in the viral world of web 2.0?, ask Pil and Galia Kollectiv

As HM Revenue & Customs loses 25 million confidential records in the post, the programme to introduce a centralised NHS database slouches on, only delayed by a classically wasteful PFI project. Total data transparency may be good for corporations and security obsessed governments, but what does it mean for the recipients of ‘joined-up care’?, asks Damian Abbott

Signs of Life offers one of the first surveys of the emerging field of ‘bioart’. But, writes Betti Marenko, this book often reveals an art genre in danger of providing biotech with its ultimate PR tool, instead of the critique its production of new economically driven life forms so urgently requires

The notion of the 'failed state' is recurrently invoked to justify military and security interventions. Reviewing two books which take so-called failed states in Africa and South America as their object of enquiry, Angela Mitropoulos questions the founding premises of 'successful' national sovereignty