Public Knowledge: Notes on Evil – A workshop with Steven Warwick - Camden Art Centre

What is evil? How can it be framed and articulated? Can its articulation paradoxically obscure larger forces and structures that seek to prevent social and societal change? What do conspiracy and narrative mean in today's world? Is evil still a valid term?

Artist, musician, and writer Steven Warwick, who performs under the moniker of Heatsick, will lead a two-day workshop at Camden Art Centre. The workshop will offer an introductory theoretical and practical understanding of how to navigate the concept of evil, both historically and in contemporary society.

Drawing from his 2022 book Notes on Evil, Warwick will lead a day of discursive theoretical exploration, examining how the concept manifests in his practice as a performer and in popular culture more broadly. The second day will focus on practice, with participants collaborating on a writing exercise that will culminate in a final performance.

The Artist

The Artist

Steven Warwick is an artist, author, and musician based in Berlin. Writing and performance connect his various practices. He has recorded several albums under his own name, as well as the alias Heatsick. In 2017, he co-authored a book with Nora Khan called Fear Indexing The X-Files. His new book, Notes On Evil, evaluates representations of evil in cinema, music, and politics to explore how societies construct enemies and create distractions from deeper inequities.

His practice encompasses theatre-making, sculptural installation, performance, video and composition. His work is disseminated on a multitude of platforms including records, galleries, nightclubs, publications and the Internet. Across these contexts, Warwick creates assemblages of performance, image, sound and language that speak to the ways in which ideologies construct and inhabit spaces, online and offline – from co-working spaces to clubs, television shows and online chat rooms.

In its pluralistic live forms, Warwick’s work redefines the expectations and conventions that accompany events such as performance and public exhibitions.  His visual work has been exhibited at KW Berlin; Schinkel Pavillon, Volksbühne Berlin, Klosterruine Berlin, Reading International, Zürich Moves! Festival, Art Night London, SMK, Copenhagen; The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Cleopatra’s, New York; Hot Wheels Athens; and Balice Hertling, New York. As a musician working under his own name and under the moniker ‘Heatsick’, he produces and performs a hybrid live/ DJ set, releasing recordings with the club/experimental label PAN and has played at Berghain, Berlin; London Contemporary Music Festival; Trouw, Amsterdam; Bergen Konsthall; LAMPO/ Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago; Issue Project Room, New York; and the Mutek and Unsound Festivals. His writing has appeared in ArtforumTexte zur Kunst,  BOMB, Frieze, and Urbanomic. He is also a co-author of ‘Fear Indexing the X- Files’, an audiovisual performance-lecture series issued as a book by Primary Information and Notes On Evil was published in 2022 on Floating Opera Press.