About
Matthew Donovan writes about political ethnography, and cultural criticism, and whatever. They're a co-founder of The Future Left, co-host of Neoliberalhell, and currently studying sociology at Columbia University. Their work spans media theory, political ethnography, and cultural criticism, appearing in publications like The New York Times, NPR, Interview, Vice, Lever News, Office, Zora Zine, Paper, and Hyperallergic. They’re also a co-host of the Neoliberalhell podcast, known for mixing political discourse with ambient internet anthropology.
Before Columbia, before writing, Donovan lived under the name Teaadora Nikolova—a trans-femme identity formed in the wake of midwest punk scenes and outsider folk. From 2009 to 2015, they played hundreds of shows across the U.S., released records on lathe and tape, and shared bills with Acid Mothers Temple, William Basinski, Juliana Barwick, Grimes, Tony Conrad, No Age, and others. The music was described as intimate, spectral, "the kind of beautiful that feels like it's disintegrating as you hear it."
Their debut LP Virgin Forever became the most-played record on WXYC in 2013. They were featured in Vandura Capsule Logbook alongside Thurston Moore, and performed at feminist experimental festivals like Titwrench. The project blurred confessional songwriting with noise, early slowcore, and private ritual. Their later album, recorded at Flat Black Studios, remains unreleased.
In the years between music and academia, Donovan organized for Occupy, taught yoga in public housing basements, earned a Master Gardening certificate, apprenticed on a organic farm, and co-ran mutual aid and voter education projects from LA to Berlin. With The Future Left, they helped produce data investigations into police lobbying networks, simulcast reading groups, and grassroots cultural campaigns that contributed to electing LA’s current District Attorney.
Their lectures and panel appearances span institutions and artist-run spaces—The New Centre, USC, WCCW, Wolfgang Tillmans’s Between Bridges. Collaborators have included organizers, poets, artists, whistleblowers, Amazon union leaders, and Anna Delvey on house arrest.
Their writing moves between theory and memoir, often documenting class dislocation, gendered misrecognition, and post-internet affect. They’re currently completing a collection of auto-theoretical essays on performance, family, and the algorithmic uncanny. One was recently excerpted by Office Magazine, who described it as “clever in the way survival demands.”
This Substack is a place for field notes, unfinished thoughts, dispatches from dead-end parties, and attempts to rethread sincerity through scenes that prefer spectacle. If you’ve ever wondered where ideas go when they’re reposted without citation, or what desire looks like in a feedback loop—welcome.
