Gossip, like intelligence, is everywhere and nowhere. It moves in whispers, side conversations, offstage exchanges, and furtive glances; it circulates along social networks and institutional corridors, at once unverifiable and consequential. Dismissed as trivial, feminine, and unprofessional, gossip has also been a vital mode of transmitting knowledge, signaling danger, building solidarity, and circulating intelligence outside of official channels or sharing what cannot be spoken aloud.

This seminar brings gossip to the center of our inquiry into matters of intelligence. What if the rumor, the aside, the overheard conversation, and the whispered speculation are not deviations from legitimate knowledge, but essential to how information is interpreted, shared, and acted upon? Across history, informal networks have carried news when formal lines broke down; secrets have been protected or exposed through rumor; and communities have survived through coded talk, listening practices, and subversive forms of knowledge-sharing and belonging.

Gossip Work asks how informal communication operates as an intelligence system. How do minor, feminized, or racialized forms of speech become powerful—sometimes dangerously so? What is the politics of the whisper network? How do unofficial channels shape both statecraft and everyday life? And what models of knowledge, care, or community might emerge when gossip is not dismissed as noise, but studied as method?

Gossip Work considers how intelligence is not only gathered by official agencies but generated through informal infrastructures, embodied knowledge, and fugitive social forms. Exploring gossip across history and mediums—speakers, including philosopher Karen C. Adkins, graphic designer Deborah Khodanovich, and artist and curator Lua Vollaard, reflect on how these forms are held, circulated, weaponized, and resisted.

Matter of Intelligence Seminar Series
Through modes of shared study, rehearsal, and iterative dialogue with invited artists, thinkers, and the public, the VLC Seminar Series develops and presents artistic and scholarly research centered on the Vera List Center’s 2025–2027 Focus Theme, Matter of Intelligence. Comprising twelve sessions convened from September 2025 through May 2027, the Seminar Series is conceived as an open curriculum and a site for collective inquiry. Each seminar is paired with a curated reader on the Matter of Intelligence Are.na channel, grounding the dialogue and opening new paths for exploration.