World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2022, English
Hardcover (cloth-bound), 108 pages, 26 x 30 cm
Published by
Daniel Buchholz Galerie / Köln
Art & Theory / Stockholm
$85.00 - Out of stock
The first monograph on the artist Ulla Wiggen. This comprehensive catalogue contains new texts by Daniel Birnbaum, Peter Cornell, Sabeth Buchmann, and Caleb Considine. The publication reproduces nearly all of the artist’s paintings since 1963.
Ulla Wiggen (b. 1942) is a Swedish painter. Wiggen is known for her paintings that interpret electronic circuitry, integrated circuit dies and schematic diagrams. She explored this world when hardly anyone could predict how digital technology would revolutionize our daily lives. In 1966, she participated in the performances 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering in New York assisting Öyvind Fahlström, whose radical view of art was of great importance to her. In the late 1960s she was also known for her human figure paintings. She also became a licensed psychotherapist, which became her primary vocation until 2013 when she, after an exhibition with her previous paintings at the Moderna Museet, decided to resume her artworks after 30 years break. Since then, her focus on the computer's interior and the human exterior has shifted to the inside of the human body and increasingly focused on the brain and iris of the eye.
2022, English
Printed envelope w. 10 cards, 22.5 x 15 cm
Published by
Galerie Buchholz / Köln
$38.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published to accompany Jutta Koether’s exhibition How goes it? at Galerie Buchholz, Köln in September 2021. This orange envelope contains 5 colour plate reproductions of the paintings featured in the exhibition, alongside 5 black and white text cards with a written correspondence between Sabeth Buchmann and the artist.
2006, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 23 x 14 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$79.00 - Out of stock
Art After Conceptual Art tracks the various legacies of conceptualist practice over the past three decades. This collection of essays by art historians and artists from Europe and the Americas (including Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Helen Molesworth, Isabelle Graw, Thomas Crow, Helmut Draxler, Alexander Alberro, Sabeth Buchmann, Henrik Oelsen, Edit András) introduces and develops the idea that conceptual art generated several different, and even contradictory, forms of art practice. Some of these contested commonplace assumptions of what art is; others served to buttress those assumptions. The bulk of the volume features newly written and highly innovative essays challenging standard interpretations of the legacy of conceptualism and discussing the influence of conceptualism's varied practices on art since the 1970s. The essays explore topics as diverse as the interrelationships between conceptualism and institutional critique, neoexpressionist painting and conceptualist paradigms, conceptual art's often-ignored complicity with design and commodity culture, the specific forms of identity politics taken up by the reception of conceptual art, and conceptualism's North/South and East/West dynamics. A few texts that continue to be crucial for critical debates within the fields of conceptual and postconceptual art practice, history, and theory have been reprinted in order to convey the vibrant and ongoing discussion on the status of art after conceptual art. Taken together, the essays will inspire an exploration of the relationship between postconceptualist practices and the beginnings of contemporary art.
2012, English
Hardcover with dust jacket, 192 pages, 17.4 x 23.2 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$74.00 $25.00 - In stock -
Martin Beck’s exhibition “Panel 2—‘Nothing better than a touch of ecology and catastrophe to unite the social classes…’” draws on the events of the 1970 International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) and the development of the Aspen Movie Map to form a visual environment that reflects the interrelations between art, architecture, design, ecology, and social movements.
The 1970 IDCA marked a turning point in design thinking. The conference’s theme, “Environment by Design,” brought together venerable figures of modern design in the United States, including Eliot Noyes, George Nelson, and Saul Bass; environmental collectives and activist architects from Berkeley such as the Environmental Action Group, Sim Van der Ryn, and Ant Farm; as well as a group of French designers and sociologists, among them Jean Aubert, Lionel Schein, and Jean Baudrillard. The conference quickly escalated into a site of unresolvable conflict about communication formats and the potential role of design for environmental practices in a rapidly changing society.
The ensuing decade heralded the development of an interactive navigation system, which used the same Colorado resort town as its test site. The Aspen Movie Map—initiated by MIT’s Architecture Machine Group (the predecessor to the Media Lab) and partially funded by the US Department of Defense—is an image-based surrogate travel system using footage filmed in Aspen. Meant to prepare users for quick orientation in places they have never been to, the Aspen Movie Map was a seminal prototype for today’s military and consumer navigation systems.
The Aspen Complexdocuments two versions of Beck’s exhibition—at London’s Gasworks and Columbia University’s Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery—and brings together yet unpublished archival material and new research on the 1970 IDCA and the Aspen Movie Map.
With essays by Sabeth Buchmann, Felicity D. Scott, and Alice Twemlow
2021, English
Softcover, 264 pages, 20 x 13 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$40.00 - Out of stock
An examination of the relationship between art and cybernetics and their intersections, with works that uses the powerlessness of art.
Cybernetics of the Poor examines the relationship between art and cybernetics and their intersections in the past and present. From the late 1940s on, the term cybernetics began to be used to describe self-regulating systems that measure, anticipate, and react in order to intervene in changing conditions. Initially relevant mostly in the fields of administration, planning, criminology, and early ecology, under digital capitalism cybernetics has since become an economic factor (particularly in the realm of big data). In such a cybernetic totality, art must respond to a new situation: a cybernetics of the poor.
Cybernetics of the Poor presents work that uses the powerlessness of art—its poverty—vis-à-vis the cybernetic machine to propose countermodels: work that is both recent and historical by artists who believed in cybernetics as a participatory, playful practice or were pioneers in delineating a counter-cybernetics. How much of what Thomas Pynchon termed “counterforce” exists within art when it is conceived as a cybernetics of the poor?
Texts by Sabeth Buchmann, Mercedes Bunz, Diedrich Diederichsen, Oier Etxeberria, Harun Farocki
With artistic contributions by Agency, Ana De Almeida, Alicja Rogalska & Vanja Smiljanić, Eleanor Antin, Cory Arcangel, Elena Asins, Paolo Cirio, Coleman Collins, Hanne Darboven, Jon Mikel Euba, Michael Hakimi, Douglas Huebler, Gema Intxausti, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Mike Kelley, Ferdinand Kriwet, Agnieszka Kurant, Mario Navarro, Adrian Piper, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Heinrich Riebesehl, Pedro G. Romero, Constanze Ruhm, Jörg Schlick, Camila Sposati, Kathrin Stumreich, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, Tanja Widmann, Robert Adrian X
Diedrich Diederichsen
Diedrich Diederichsen is a German author, music journalist, and cultural critic. He is one of Germany's most renowned intellectual writers at the crossroads of the arts, politics, and pop culture.
Oier Etxeberria
Oier Etxeberria is a Basque visual artist and musician. He is head of the Visual Arts at CICC Tabakalera.
2011, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 20.3 x 25.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Verlag fur moderne Kunst / Nuremberg
$100.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful, now out-of-print book produced on the most comprehensive survey exhibition to date of work by Berlin-based artist Manfred Pernice, held at the Neue Museum in Nuremberg in 2011, incorporating existing and new works in relation to one another. Profusely illustrated, this definitive publication documents the artist's work to date via essays and a comprehensive illustrated biography.
With his installation-based work, Manfred Pernice (born 1963) belongs to a new generation of German artists who have established international reputations. His sculptures are constructed from conventional building materials such as particle board, blockboard, iron rods and concrete. The formal vocabulary of Pernice’s works often consists of details of real architecture, ranging from tile-covered surfaces and closed structural forms to very specific architectural design solutions such as the Fiat car factory in Turin with its rooftop test track. Functional components such as containers, walled enclosures, mounts or supports also serve as models for his sculptural objects. Pernice often combines these architecturally oriented works with pieces of furniture, models, drawings, photographs or texts to create expansive and evocative installations.
The exhibition title – Que-Sah – refers to one volume of the Brockhaus encyclopaedia, where alphabetical arrangement is used to give systematic order to the extremely varied lexical contents. On this subject Pernice has commented that, “Like the first entry in this volume (Quebec conferences) and the last one (Saho, stock farmers of northern Ethiopia), all the other conceptual phenomena that lie between them are also potential areas of artistic exploration.”
Text by Angelika Nollert, Jennifer Allen, Sabeth Buchmann, Jan Verwoert, Melitta Kliege.
2011, English/German
Softcover, 240 pages, 24 x 30 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$79.00 $30.00 - Out of stock
With texts by Sabeth Buchmann, Anselm Franke, Ariane Müller, Branden Joseph, Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Ian White, Axel John Wieder
Poor Man's Expression examines the relationship between film, video, technology, and art, with a particular focus on the reciprocal influences between conceptual art and experimental film. The publication is based on the eponymous exhibition in Berlin in 2006, but represents an independent compendium of texts and images beyond the show. Works, lectures and performances by international artists, created for the exhibition and expanded for the publication, are set alongside historical experimental films from the archive of the Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek in Berlin. The authors and artists respond to the questions that arise as to the semantics of critical and experimental conceptual art, medial representation, and the expansion of a concept of technology towards social functions and psychology; they explore problems of medial control, intellectual property, and a changing concept of the public.
as a point of departure we have assumed that there was once a close relationship between forms that now exist rather separately, namely the realms of visual art, experimental film, literature, poetry, music – and very much the development of technology, too. what is it supposed to mean that 16mm projectors now occupy their luxurious final performance sites at art societies and galleries, while iphone youtube (without open source codecs, to be sure) is the current way to watch a hollis frampton interview.
the other way around, isn’t the gentle entry of the genre of "experimental film" into the realm of "media art" of the 1980s and 1990s itself a transformation analog to general social and medial development brought about by the development of individualization and consumer society? in poor man's expression we have sought, through an advanced setting ("affirmative" neon light surfaces, and the exhibition's "paradoxical" bipartite spatial principle) to address the surrounding "corporate public" architecture of the sony center as well as the film archive deep underground and the dark cinema space of the "avant-garde cinema."
Artists: Stephanie Taylor, Sebestyén Kodolányi, Sebastian Lütgert, Henrik Olesen, Mathias Poledna, Sean Snyder, Daria Martin, Kirsten Pieroth, Martin Ebner, Florian Zeyfang
Images: Anthony Balch, Len Lye, Carolee Schneeman, Bruce Conner, Harry Smith, Joyce Wieland, George Landow, Marie Menken, Ken Jacobs, Rober Breer, Emile Cohl, a.o.
In collaboration with Arsenal Institute for Film and Video art
2016, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 292 pages, 12 x 19 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$54.00 - Out of stock
Painting beyond Itself
The Medium in the Post-medium Condition
Isabelle Graw, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth (Eds.)
Contributions by Carol Armstrong, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Sabeth Buchmann, René Démoris, Isabelle Graw, David Joselit, Jutta Koether, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Julie Mehretu, Matt Saunders, Amy Sillman
In response to recent developments in pictorial practice and critical discourse, Painting beyond Itself: The Medium in the Post-medium Condition seeks new ways to approach and historicize the question of the medium. Reaching back to the earliest theoretical and institutional definitions of painting, this book—based on a conference at Harvard University in 2013—focuses on the changing role of materiality in establishing painting as the privileged practice, discourse, and institution of modernity. Myriad conceptions of the medium and its specificity are explored by an international group of scholars, critics, and artists. Painting beyond Itself is a forum for rich historical, theoretical, and practice-grounded conversation.
Institut für Kunstkritik Series
Design by Surface
2020, English
Softcover, 300 pages, 14 x 21.1 cm
Published by
Campus Verlag / Frankfurt
$96.00 $60.00 - Out of stock
The Value of Critique casts its gaze on the two dominant modes of passing judgment in art--critique and value (or evaluation). The act of critique has long held sway in the world of art theory but has recently been increasingly abandoned in favor of evaluation, which advocates alternate modes of judgment aimed at finding the intrinsic "value" of a given work rather than picking apart its intentions and relative success. This book's contributors explore the relationship between these two practices, finding that one cannot exist with the other. As soon as a critic decides an object is worthy enough of their interest and time to critique it, they have imbued that object with a certain value. Similarly, theories of value are typically marked by a critical impetus: as much as critique takes part in the construction of evaluations, bestowing something with value can then trigger critiques. Assembling essays from an international array of authors, this book is the first to put value, critique, and artistic labor in conversation with one another, making clear just how closely all three are related.
2019, English / German
Softcover, 240 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$32.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
For the latest issue no. 113, TEXTE ZUR KUNST investigates the structures within the arts and cultural spheres where racism and discrimination are practiced, performed, and reproduced. This special issue concentrates specifically on the context of Germany, and includes discussions and texts from artists and theorists throughout the country who have dedicated special attention to current and ongoing political and social crises; specifically the challenges these crises pose for the language and terms of art criticism. How can criticism mount an appropriate response to the discrimination and injustices that pervade all levels of society?
ISSUE NO. 113 / MARCH 2019 "DISKRIMINIERUNG/DISCRIMINATION"
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
SABETH BUCHMANN AND ISABELLE GRAW - THE CRITIQUE OF ART CRITICISM
COMMON GROUND / Colin Lang in Conversation with Julia Grosse, Suza Husse, and Max Czollek
ÇIĞDEM INAN
NON-RECOGNITION / The Other Side of the Critique of Racism
VIOLENT MEDIATIONS / Jenny Nachtigall in Conversation with Hannah Black
NAMING RACISM / Sven Beckstette in Conversation with Veronika Fuechtner and Oliver Hardt
HELMUT DRAXLER - THE ART OF DISCRIMINATION
ROTATION
INTENTIONALE BEGEGNUNGEN / Hanna Magauer über Christian Kravagnas „Transmoderne. Eine Kunstgeschichte des Kontakts“
SITUIERTE SENSIBILITÄT! / Michaela Ott über „Sensibilität der Gegenwart“ von Burkhard Liebsch (Hg.)
LIEBE ARBEIT KINO
PARTICLE ACCELERATOR / Daniel Horn on the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, Geneva
REVIEWS
COURS, CAMARADE / Tom McDonough on “The Most Dangerous Game” at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
BAUHAUS IM GLOBALEN SÜDEN / Tobi Maier über „bauhaus imaginista: Learning From“ im SESC Pompéia, São Paulo
FULLY IMMERSED / Megan R. Luke on Heidi Bucher at Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London
DOPPELBELASTUNG / Sophie Goltz über „Medea muckt auf. Radikale Künstlerinnen hinter dem Eisernen Vorhang“ in der Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, Dresden
AUDIENZ BEIM MALERFÜRSTEN / Ulrich Pfisterer über Jörg Immendorff im Haus der Kunst, München
SITUATIONAL AWARENESS / SOFTCORE INSURRECTION / Kari Rittenbach on Tobias Kaspar at the Kunsthalle Bern
THROWAWAY INVENTIVENESS / Mirjam Thomann über Cady Noland im Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main
REBEL REBEL / Saim Demircan on Sarah Lucas at the New Museum, New York
AUFGELADENE FRACHT / Nadja Abt über Ulrike Müller im Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf
EVENTUALLY, EVERYTHING BECOMES LIQUID / Luisa Lorenza Corna on Metahaven at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
EVENING JOE / Robert Müller über Ed Ruscha in der Secession, Wien
CIRCUMSTANCES OF SOCIAL WORK / Eric Golo Stone on Laurie Parsons at the Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach
AT LAST, WARHOL COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET / Jonathan D. Katz on Andy Warhol at the Whitney Museum of American Art
OBITUARY
ROBERT MORRIS (1931−2018)
FERDINAND KRIWET (1942–2018)
LOTHAR BAUMGARTEN (1944–2018)
EDITION
ARTURO HERRERA
ALICJA KWADE
2018, English / German
Softcover, 272 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$30.00 - Out of stock
In the 18 years since Texte zur Kunst first turned its attention to the field of performance, a lot has happened, to say the least. Today, performance refers to almost any act, willing or forced, and is used by the institutions the world over whose aim is often to solicit performative acts from consumers, whether they are an audience at an art event or a user of social media. With performance today comes the inevitable system of evaluation—likes, ratings, grades, followers, etc.—a fact that has made separating performance as an art, and its popularity, from the overpowering influence of the culture of evaluation. For this issue of Texte zur Kunst, "Performance Evaluation," we investigate the overlapping definitions of performance, following their ubiquity and uses in particular, in order to evaluate what performance means today, and what we mean when we call something a "performance."
Issue No. 110 / June 2018 "Performance Evaluation"
Table Of Contents
Vorwort
Preface
Sabeth Buchmann
Feed Back: Performance In The Evaluation Society
Steffen Mau And Uwe Vormbusch
Likes And Performance / A Conversation Between Uwe Vormbusch And Steffen Mau On The Quantification Of The Social
Alexandra Pirici
Performance As Conjuring / Artist Statement
Stefan Hölscher
(Re-)Evaluating Performance Since 1990
Evelyn Annuss
On The Future Of The Volksbühne –
Failure Is An Option
Andreas Gelhard
Notes On The Competence Society
Working With Performance / A Conversation About Collaboration, Collectivity, And The Value Of Performance
New Development :
Amanda Schmitt
Miranda Warning
Rotation :
Nach Dem Metabolischen Bruch / Martin Müller Über „Molekulares Rot. Theorie Für Das Anthropozän“ Von Mckenzie Wark
Klang Körper
Äpfel Und Birnen / Wolfgang Seidel Über „Underground Und Improvisation. Alternative Musik Und Kunst Nach 1968“ In Der Akademie Der Künste, Berlin
Stunt / Anke Dyes Über Georgia Sagri Im Portikus Frankfurt/M.
Brighten The Corners / Colin Lang On “Res·O·Nant” At The Jewish Museum Berlin
Anke Dyes, Luisa Kleemann Und Tina Schulz
Über Das Gallery Weekend In Berlin
Reviews :
Endstation Selbstbezug / Hans-Christian Dany Über „Harald Szeemann: Museum Of Obsessions“ Und „Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us“ Im Getty Center Und Ica In Los Angeles
Forward In This Generation / Eva Díaz On The New Museum Triennial
Archivarisch Verdichtet / Agnieszka Roguski Über „Left Performance Histories“
In Der Neuen Gesellschaft Für Bildende Kunst, Berlin
Broken Lineage / Gregory H. Williams On “Inventur: Art In Germany, 1943–55” At The Harvard Art Museums
Geld Ist Sein Pinsel / Verena Dengler Über Damien Hirst Bei Gagosian, Beverly Hills
Antipathy & Ecstasy / Kari Rittenbach On Ilya Lipkin At Svetlana, New York
Museum In Progress / Barbara Hess Über „Von Da An. Räume, Werke, Vergegenwärtigungen Des Antimuseums 1967–1978“ Im Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach
Composition As Explanation / Annie Godfrey Larmon On Cally Spooner At The Centre D’art Contemporain Genève
Ikonisches Nachleben / Johannes Bennke Über James Benning Bei Neugerriem-Schneider, Berlin
Game Of Thrones / Chris Reitz On Geta Bratescu At Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles
Park, Blicke / Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer Über Maya Schweizer Im Kunstverein Leipzig
Humanity’s Last Hopf / Mikael Brkic On Judith Hopf At Kunst-Werke Berlin
Memes, Schönheit Und Verfremdung / Jessica Aimufua Über Arthur Jafa In Der Julia Stoschek
Collection Berlin
Unendliche Arbeit / Hans-Jürgen Hafner Über Catherine Christer Hennix
Im Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Relentless Applause / Carmen Gray On Katrina Daschner At The Neue Galerie Graz
Karikaturen Ohne Pointe / Michael Franz Und Franziska Ipfelkofer Über Matthias Noggler Bei Emanuel Layr, Wien
Administrativer Papierkram / Fiona Geuß Über „Paperwork“ In Der Sammlung Haubrok, Fahrbereitschaft, Berlin
Nachrufe :
Linda Nochlin (1931–2017)
Kynaston Mcshine (1935–2018)
Peter Gorsen (1933–2017)
Edition :
Tauba Auerbach
Eliza Douglas
Hans Haacke
2017, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 145 x 210 mm
Published by
Whitechapel / London
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$49.00 - Out of stock
Warhol’s Factory of the 1960s, Minimalism’s assembly-line aesthetics, conceptual and feminist concern with workers’ conditions in the 1970s—these are among the antecedents of a renewed focus on the work of art: labor as artistic activity, as artistic method and as object of artistic engagement. In 2002, the “Work Ethic” exhibition curated by Helen Molesworth at the Baltimore Museum of Art took its cue from recent art to spotlight this earlier era of artistic practice in which activity became as valid as, and often dispensed with, object-production. Revealed through this prism was “dematerialized” art’s close and critical relation to the emergent information age’s criteria of management, production and skill.
By 2015, the Venice Biennale reflected artists’ wider concern with global economic and social crises, centered on exploitative and precarious worlds of employment. Yet while art increasingly engages with human travail, work’s significance in itself is seldom addressed by critics. This anthology explicitly investigates work in relation to contemporary art, surveying artistic strategies that grapple with the complexities of being an art worker in the new economy, a postproducer, a collaborator, a fabricator, a striker, an ethical campaigner, or would-be transformer of labor from oppression to liberation.
Artists surveyed include
Pawel Althamer, Francis Alÿs, Marwa Arsanios, Chto Delat, Alice Creischer, Ana de la Cueva, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Jeremy Deller, Maria Eichhorn, Harun Farocki, Claire Fontaine, Andrea Fraser, Liam Gillick, Melanie Gilligan, Gulf Labour Coalition, Tehching Hsieh, Lamia Joreige, Lee Lozano, Goshka Macuga, Teresa Margolles, Adrian Melis, Annette Messager, Gustav Metzger, Jean-Luc Moulène, Ahmet Ögüt, Philip Rizk, Martha Rosler, Tino Sehgal, Santiago Sierra, Tamas St. Auby, Mladen Stilinovic, W.A.G.E., Artur Zmijewski
Writers include
Claire Bishop, Luc Boltanski, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Sabeth Buchmann, Ève Chiapello, Kodwo Eshun, Silvia Federici, Isabelle Graw, Maurizio Lazzarato, Achille Mbembe, Antonio Negri, Jacques Rancière, Gerald Raunig, Dietmar Rübel, Paolo Virno, Joseph Vogl
About the Editor
Friederike Sigler is a researcher and lecturer at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Dresden. She is the author of Work/Strike.
2017, English / German
Softcover, 232 pages, 22 x 14 cm
Published by
KW Institute for Contemporary Art / Berlin
Koenig Books / London
$32.00 - In stock -
I think it can only be because of memory-of-knowing-how that we made it through the grey days in cities in general–and through the greyness of Berlin in particular–that we made it through again and again. Because the streets switched directions too, rushing towards us a whole lot faster. Bicycles became utterly useless. Just looking at them knocked the air out of their tyres. What's more, ticket prices increased and coins no longer fit in the slots of vending machines. [Judith Hopf, Stepping Stairs]
With texts by Kathy Acker, Madeleine Bernstorff, Sabeth Buchmann, Maurin Dietrich, Anna Gritz, John Hejduk, Judith Hopf, Monika Rinck, Avital Ronell, Annette Wehrmann
2017, English / German
Softcover, 248 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$32.00 - Out of stock
"Identity politics" has always been beleaguered territory. Yet recently the debate around “identity" has intensified and (with Trump) even developed new fronts. This issue examines the present state of identity politics in the West, finding the commodification of identity in mass culture (as in the art market) to be a leading influence. We also recognize a divide between, on the one hand, non-dominant communities cohering around identity so as to become visible together; and on the other hand, individuals aiming to stand out as special or "unique" by dint of membership in various non-dominant groups. Such ambiguity, in the face of current leadership (see issue cover) lends only all the more urgency, we feel, for a serious engagement with “identity” vis-a-vis “politics” now.
ISSUE NO. 107 / SEPTEMBER 2017 "IDENTITY POLITICS NOW"
Table Of Contents
Preface
True And False Victims / Sarah Schulman In Conversation With Caroline Busta and Anke Dyes (Texte Zur Kunst)
People Politics
Gabi Ngcobo & Yvette Mutumba, Klaus Biesenbach, Egija Inzule On "People Politics"
Monique Roelofs / Identity And Its Public Platforms: A String Of Promises Entwined With Threats
Andreas Reckwitz / Performative Authenticity: The Subject In The Late Modern Society Of Singularities
What Would Winning Look Like? / Bini Adamczak In Conversation With Anke Dyes (Texte Zur Kunst)
Coco Fusco / Decades Of Identity Politics
Bildstrecke
Sandra Mujinga
Rotation
Das Falsche Buch Zur Richtigen Zeit / Floris Biskamp Über „Beißreflexe“ Von Patsy L’amour Lalove
Apocalypse, A Lover’s Discourse / Jeff Nagy On “Life” By Hannah Black and Juliana Huxtable
Das Unbewusste Ist Strukturiert Wie Eine Ware / Helmut Draxler Und Kerstin Stakemeier Über „The Capitalist Unconscious“ Von Samo Tomšic
Zwischen Warten Und Wandern / Christiane Voss Über „Siegfried Kracauer. Eine Biografie“ Von Jörg Später
Liebe Arbeit Kino
Ghost In Chanel / Tobias Madison On Olivier Assayas’s Film “Personal Shopper”
Lippenbekenntnisse / Fiona Mcgovern Über Kerstin Honeit Im Videoraum Der Berlinischen Galerie
Grand Tour
Documenta 14 - Skulptur Projekte Münster - 57Th Biennale Di Venezia
Aus Fehlern Lernen / Sabeth Buchmann Und Ilse Lafer Über Die Documenta 14 In Athen
Incorrect History / Tom Mcdonough On Naeem Mohaiemen’s “Two Meetings And A Funeral” At Documenta 14, Kassel
Public Sculpture Pokéstop / Amy Lien And Enzo Camacho On Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017
Aufhören, Wenn’s Am Schönsten Ist / Eva Ehninger Über Die Skulptur Projekte Münster
The Stuck Hourglass / Venus Lau On The 57Th Venice Biennale
Crowd Kontrolle / Judith Rodenbeck On Anne Imhof’s “Faust” For The German Pavilion, 57Th Venice Biennale
Reviews
Negative Chic / Ken Okiishi On Rei Kawakubo/Comme Des Garçons At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York
Zünftig In Die Zukunft / Beate Söntgen Über „Otto Freundlich: Kosmischer Kommunismus“ Im Museum Ludwig, Köln
The Man In The Mirror / Sarah Morris On Merlin Carpenter At Galerie Neu, Berlin
Verdeckte Arbeit / Gertrud Koch Über Sarah Morris Bei Capitain Petzel, Berlin
Marilyn And The Museum With Walls / Kevin Lotery On Rachel Harrison At Greene Naftali, New York
Unterwerfung Durch Architektur / Anna Voswinkel Über Peggy Buth Im Museum Folkwang Essen
Democracy Of Sound / Zoë Alexandra Harris On “Free Music Production/Fmp: The Living Music” At Haus Der Kunst, Munich
Tausend Snapchat-Rimbauds / Hans-Christian Dany Über Seth Price Im Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Trocadero Drift / John Kelsey on Michel Houellebecq At Venus Over Manhattan, New York
Resident Aliens / Ella Plevin On Monira Al Qadiri At Gasworks, London
Blickwechsel-Begehren / Ines Kleesattel Über Birgit Megerle Im Kunsthaus Glarus
Containers Of The Virtual / Lars Bang Larsen On Hans-Christian Lotz At Christian Andersen, Copenhagen
Geschwätzige Zeiten / Tobias Teutenberg Über „After The Fact. Propaganda Im 21. Jahrhundert“ In Der Städtischen Galerie Im Lenbachhausund Kunstbau München
The Interdependence Of Feelings And Debates / Yuki Higashino On Martin Beck At Mumok, Vienna
Nachruf
Werner Hamacher (1948–2017)
Edition
Josh Kline
Juergen Teller
2016, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 16.5 x 22 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
The Academy of Fine Arts / Vienna
$40.00 - Out of stock
Sabeth Buchmann, Ilse Lafer, Constanze Ruhm (Eds.)
Putting Rehearsals to the Test
Practices of Rehearsal in Fine Arts, Film, Theater, Theory, and Politics
Contributions by Rainer Bellenbaum, Vincent Bonin, Sabeth Buchmann, José M. Bueso, Kathrin Busch, Stefanie Diekmann, Kai van Eikels, Stephan Geene, Richard Ibghy, Ekkehard Knörer, Eva Könnemann, Ilse Lafer, Christine Lang, Susanne Leeb, Marilou Lemmens, Achim Lengerer, Annemarie Matzke, Jenny Nachtigall, Silke Otto-Knapp, Avital Ronell, Constanze Ruhm, Martin Jörg Schäfer, Dorothea Walzer
Although the format of the rehearsal is used across a number of disciplines—film and theater as well as fine arts—it has been scarcely considered in historical and contemporary art discourses. With this in mind, Putting Rehearsals to the Test investigates the role and function of the rehearsal as a methodology, modus operandi, medium, site of representation, and reflection on processes of artistic production. As the contributions in this book show, practices of rehearsal put those procedures—sometimes joyful, sometimes troublesome but structurally productive—into the foreground to replace given conventions and regulations with new forms and rules. Shaping working processes (the in-the-making) and products (the making-of) without defined aims and ends, artists, activists, and theorists working with strategies of rehearsal focus on moments of contingency, interruption, recommencement, irregular repetition, uncertainty, and failure within existing systems. Practices of rehearsal, in attempting to transform asymmetric labor divisions, appear as links between aesthetic judgment and social or institutional critique. This book is a critical and timely reappraisal of the methodologies of the rehearsal, and makes a claim for the aesthetic and political potential in the unfinished project.
Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, vol. 19
Design by Surface
2016, English / German
Softcover, 248 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$30.00 - Out of stock
Issue #104 of TzK examines a key protagonist of the modern age: the individual. As our cover suggests, there is an inherent tragedy to this being who, however autonomous, is beholden to a program that it must internalize at the price of suffering enormously. This issue takes up the individual not as a fixed subject, but as a mode of the self that shifts according to the current form of governance, asking how 15-some years of the "new spirit of capitalism" has shaped her – as an artist, as an entrepreneur, as a "productive" contemporary self.
ISSUE NO. 104 / DECEMBER 2016 “THE INDIVIDUAL”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
INVEST YOURSELF! / Wendy Brown in conversation with Isabelle Graw
NINA POWER
FROM THE ONE TO THE MANY
CAN THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SELF TWEET? / An interview with Ulrich Bröckling
BUFFERING OF THE SELF: GUISING IN THE MID-’00S / Storm van Helsing, André Rottmann, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Reena Spaulings, @lilinternet, i.i.i., Luther Blissett -- on -- Luther Blissett, JT LeRoy, Reena Spaulings, @lonelygirl15, Claire Fontaine, An Hero, Lee Williams, and Strom van Helsing
SVEN LÜTTICKEN
SPEECH GESTURES / Notes on the individual and the socialization of language after Gutenberg
WOLFGANG RUPPERT
PRODUCING INDIVIDUALITY / The Artist among his Contemporaries
I’M NOT PUNK / Alex Israel in conversation with Texte zur Kunst
BILDSTRECKE
ANNA HAIFISCH
PORTFOLIO
ROTATION
FEEDBACK FÜR BLINDE FLECKE / Karin Gludovatz über „Jenseits des Spiegels. Das Sehen in Kunstgeschichte und Visual Culture Studies“ von Susanne von Falkenhausen
WORLD WIDE WEB / Anthony Vidler on Felicity D. Scott’s “Outlaw Territories”
LIEBE ARBEIT KINO
LANGSAMER ABSCHIED / Esther Buss über Albert Serras „La mort de Louis XIV“
DAS SICH SELBST TRÄUMENDE INTERNET / Sulgi Lie über Werner Herzogs „Lo and Behold. Reveries of the Connected World“
KLANG KÖRPER
SHARING ANGST / Gaby Tront on Anne Imhof's "Angst II" at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
SHORT WAVES
Mikael Brkic on Alex Israel at the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo / Steven Warwick on Morag Keil at Eden Eden, Berlin / Hanna Magauer über Dana Schutz bei Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin / Tonio Kröner über Amelie von Wulffen in der Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin / Kari Rittenbach on Margaret Lee at Jack Hanley Gallery, New York / Susanne von Falkenhausen über „Die zu sein scheint, die bin ich.“ Birgit Jürgenssen, Cindy Sherman, Katharina Sieverding und Francesca Woodman in der Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin
REVIEWS
INDIVIDUELLER ORIENT / Diedrich Diederichsen über Michael Buthe im Haus der Kunst, München
ÜBERBLENDUNGSVERHÄLTNISSE / Sabeth Buchmann über Ellen Cantor im Künstlerhaus Stuttgart
… MY MERE SELF / Rachel Haidu on Kai Althoff at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
DIE KUNST DER STUNDE / Susanne Leeb über Kader Attia im Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt / M.
RUBY STERLING ZEIGT STERLING RUBY / Tanja Widmann und Inka Meißner über Sterling Ruby im Winterpalais Wien
DAS VIRTUELLE IM PHYSISCHEN / Hanne Loreck über Katrin Mayer und Eske Schlüters in der Kunsthalle Lingen
WHY BOTHER WITH SHOW BUSINESS? / Bosko Blagojevic on Antek Walczak at Real Fine Arts, New York
WERKE / Nikola Dietrich über Karl Holmqvist und Klara Lidén im Kunstverein Braunschweig
OBITUARY
BIRD OF PARADISE / Frank Wagner (1958–2016) in the words of Julie Ault
EDITION
ROBERT LONGO
OSCAR MURILLO
COSIMA VON BONIN
2015, English / German
Hardcover, 312 pages (47 b/w and 128 color ill.), 20 x 24.5 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / New,
Published by
Generali Foundation / Vienna
Museum Abteiberg / Mönchengladbach
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$90.00 - Out of stock
In collaboration with Sabine Folie, Georgia Holz, Susanne Titz
Texts by Elissa Auther, Sabeth Buchmann, Rike Frank, Judith Raum, Seth Siegelaub, T’ai Smith, Georg Vasold, Leire Vergara, Grant Watson
One essential characteristic of textiles is their richly intertextual nature. Their contemporary appeal and historicity derive from their place in the history of art and culture as well as in the history of media, society, and technology. Representing traditions found in both applied and fine arts, textiles hover between formalism and functionalism; as objects and techniques, they mediate between relations to the self and relations to the world, between affect-driven and knowledge-driven processes of appropriation. Functionally versatile—as objects of utility and media of an abstract (visual) language—textiles read as the fulcrum of an ensemble of activities, and illustrate specific entanglements that, since the beginning of modernity, have transformed the relations between subject and object, the material and the immaterial, artistic and artisanal labor, and different cultures.
This publication examines the referential and analytical qualities of textiles through both contemporary and historical works. The contributions in this book reflect on the complex interplay between the various functions and connotations of textiles—such as the emphasis on their tactile qualities or the artistic value attributed to them—and the attendant conflicts and antagonisms that articulate relations of power and value and of the interaction of artistic processes with their overarching contexts.
Textiles: Open Letter stems from an exhibition at the Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, and a research project (2010–14) initiated by Rike Frank and Grant Watson. Including the following artists; Magdalena Abakanowicz, Anni Albers, Carl Andre, Leonor Antunes, Tonico Lemos Auad, Thomas Bayrle, Jagoda Buic, Heinrich Clasing, Yael Davids, Sofie Dawo, Ria van Eyk, Hans Finsler, Elsi Giauque, Sheela Gowda, Eva Hesse, Sheila Hicks, Loes van der Horst, Johannes Itten, Elisabeth Kadow, Paul Klee, Benita Koch-Otte, Heinrich Koch, Beryl Korot, Konrad Lueg, Agnes Martin, Katrin Mayer, Cildo Meireles, Kitty van der Mijll Dekker, Nasreen Mohamedi, Walter Peterhans, Edith Post-Eberhardt, Josephine Pryde, Florian Pumhösl, Grete Reichardt, Elaine Reichek, Willem de Rooij, Desirée Scholten, Johannes Schweiger, Gunta Stölzl, Lenore Tawney, Rosemarie Trockel
Copublished with Generali Foundation, Vienna, and Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach
Design by Martha Stutteregger
Now out of print.
2015, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 13 x 21 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$44.00 - Out of stock
Is art criticism losing ground, because of the internet and art blogs? Do people consider the authoritative art critics as their most important source to assess and filter what they want to see, read, etc.? Most recent discussions have evolved around the question "What is art criticism?", this book wants to explore the question "Where is art criticism?". It delves into new ways and spaces where art critics might interact with publics, works of art, artists and scholars.
Contributions by Luc Boltanski, Sabeth Buchmann, Robin Celikates and more...
Designed by Metahaven
2014, English
Softcover, 342 pages, 14.8 x 21 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$38.00 - Out of stock
With contributions by Jennifer Allen, Sabeth Buchmann, Annett Busch, Nils Büttner, Marcus Coelen, Discoteca Flaming Star, Helmut Draxler, Felix Ensslin, Mechthild Fend, Susanne Leeb, Christoph Menke, Frank Ruda, Jan de Vos, Charles T. Wolfe
Word becomes flesh, God becomes pigment, beauty becomes empirical form, power negotiates itself in matter—and vice versa: these are some of the connotations carried by the aesthetics of the flesh.
Flesh has been negotiated with the incarnate, the skin-like surface of paint transcends its material condition toward the embodiment of spirit. But flesh is also, for example, behind the postcolonial metaphor of anthropophago (i.e., incorporating multiple cultural traditions that are at war with each other). It can be further associated with the material of surgery, itself an heir to contradictory impulses—namely, the discourse of modern aesthetics on the one hand, and of a positivist, even naïve scientism on the other. Flesh is the topos of a thought that is unthinkable and the amoral site where force is creative. Philosophically, these primal scenes of the flesh are grouped by Descartes, and also in the radical enlightenment of philosophical materialism. Following on from Cartesian dualism, philosophy is faced with the task of valorizing the flesh beyond the religious support of incarnation. Finally, the never-ending thought which sees the flesh as an unattainable other appears—always present in its absence in each and every aesthetic discourse.
This reader, based on a three-day symposium at the State Academy of Fine Arts, Stuttgart, traces the aesthetic concept of flesh in four sections: “Cut Power Matter,” “Form Cannibalism,” “Flesh Skin Surface,” and “Word Flesh Thought.” From perspectives as diverse as art history, religion, psychoanalysis, psychology, materialist philosophy, phenomenology, surgery, film studies, and literary studies, the articles present this concept, while at the same time showing how it surpasses the attempts to systematize or define it.
Design by Matthias Christ, Philipp Schmidt, Stuttgart
2015, English / German
Softcover, 264 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$32.00 $15.00 - In stock -
ISSUE NO. 100
DECEMBER 2015
„THE CANON“
“Our 100th issue is dedicated to the question of the “canon.” We take up this theme with an interest in reflecting on the journal’s own role in the field of contemporary art — one that, when first initiated in 1990, was markedly counter-canonical, vigorously contesting certain methods of critique while supporting others. And yet, we pause here to acknowledge that after 25 years, we have also doubtlessly played a crucial part in shaping a particular discourse, even normativizing it to some degree. Could it even be said that TzK has established a canon in its own right? With this issue, we now take stock of what TzK’s relationship to the canon might be, and moreover, what the notion of canonicity in 2015 might now represent.”
ISSUE NO. 100 / DECEMBER 2015 “THE CANON”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
TOM HOLERT IN PRAISE OF PRESUMPTUOUSNESS: “KANON-POLITIK ” (1992) REVISITED
DIEDRICH DIEDERICHSEN
MIKE KELLEY
SABETH BUCHMANN
MEDIAL (SELF-)MOVEMENT
ISABELLE GRAW
CANON AND CRITIQUE: AN INTERPLAY / Heimo Zobernig
JULIANE REBENTISCH
25 ARTISTS FROM 1990 TO 2015 / And 25 reasons why each belongs in the Texte zur Kunst canon
GERTRUD KOCH
POLYPHONY OR DISSONANCE / Are there artists lost in the canon?
KERSTIN STAKEMEIER
MORE MANNERISM / Ruth May and Jan Molzberger
GUNTER RESKI
EMBEDDED NUDES / Arno Rink
ALEXANDER GARCÍA DÜTTMANN
OLD WOMEN / Maria Lassnig’s “Du oder ich” (You or me), 2005
BEATE SÖNTGEN
ROSEMARIE TROCKEL
NICK MAUSS
IAN WHITE
TESS EDMONSON
DIS
HANNA MAGAUER
POST-INTERNET: THE NEW ORDER
JOSEPHINE PRYDE
THE INDIVIDUAL
CAROLINE BUSTA
BAD CANON
SIMON DENNY
DISRUPT
KEN OKIISHI
CITIZENSHIP
VALENTINA LIERNUR
SELF-REFLECTIVE SUBJECTS
JUTTA KOETHER
FIGURE OF PAINT: ON THE INCONTROVERTIBLE!
ALICE CREISCHER AND ANDREAS SIEKMANN
TUCUMÁN ARDE
PAMELA M. LEE
GROUP MATERIAL
FELIX VOGEL
MARTIN BECK
SVEN BECKSTETTE
STURTEVANT
CLAIRE FONTAINE
TOWARD A CANONIC FREEDOM
SVEN LÜTTICKEN
FALLING APART, TOGETHER
ROBERT KULISEK AND DAVID LIESKE
HUSBANDS HAVE GOT TO DIE! / A conversation about Taryn Simon
BRIGITTE WEINGART
GREAT & SMALL
HELMUT DRAXLER
CANON OF EXISTENCE, ETHICS OF THE BREAK
ROTATION
ELECTROCONVULSIVE LIT / John Kelsey on Sylvère Lotringer’s “Mad Like Artaud”
REVIEWS
VERWISCHTE GRENZEN / Robert Müller über „Radikal Modern. Planen und Bauen im Berlin der 1960er-Jahre“ in der Berlinischen Galerie
AGING INTO NEW WORLDS: DEUTSCH-AMERIKANISCHE FREUNDSCHAFT / Bettina Funcke surveys five fall 2015 shows in New York
ANGEWANDTER HISTOMAT / Ariane Müller über „to expose, to show, to demonstrate, to inform, to offer. Künstlerische Praktiken um 1990“ im Mumok, Wien
ENIGMA IN THE MIRROR / Luis Felipe Fabre on “In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni” at Museo Jumex, Mexico City
WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD / Nuit Banai on R. H. Quaytman at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art
IST KUNST EIN SEXUALPROBLEM? / Eva Birkenstock über Lea Lublin im Lenbachhaus, München
HERE'S NOT HERE / Damon Sfetsios and Elise Duryee-Browner on Stephan Dillemuth at Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York
WEAK LOCAL LINEAMENTS / Gareth James on Sam Lewitt at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco
OBITUARIES
PETER SCHEIFFELE (1971–2015)
by Ilka Becker
CHANTAL AKERMAN (1950–2015)
by Tim Griffin
EDITION
JOHN BALDESSARI
NHU DUONG
PETER FISCHLI/DAVID WEISS
WADE GUYTON
RACHEL HARRISON
SARAH MORRIS
ALBERT OEHLEN
RICHARD PHILLIPS
SETH PRICE
GERHARD RICHTER
ROSEMARIE TROCKEL
2015, English
Softcover, 629 pages, 19.5 x 25.5 cm
Published by
Leuphana University of Lüneburg / Germany
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$42.00 - Out of stock
Contributions by Marie-Luise Angerer, Christoph Behnke, Ana Bogdanović, Larissa Buchholz, Sabeth Buchmann, Kathrin Busch, Bettina von Dziembowski, Daniel Falb, Paul Feigelfeld, Ulrike Gerhardt, Monica Greco, Erich Hörl, Cornelia Kastelan, Stefanie Kleefeld, Valérie Knoll, Roman Kräussl, Susanne Leeb, Hannes Loichinger, Sven Lütticken, Julia Moritz, Volker Pekron, Pierre Pénet, Dieter Roelstraete, Bettina Roggmann, Stefan Römer, Steffen Rudolph, Michael Sanchez, Magnus Schaefer, Stefanie Sembill, Christophe Spaenjers, Paul Stenner, Jeannine Tang, Olav Velthuis, Ulf Wuggenig
Peripheries are profoundly ambiguous regions. While trying to build a relationship with the center, the periphery often finds itself excluded both on a structural and actor-related level, no matter if the center-periphery model is defined in terms of space or along relations of power. However, beyond static perspectives of such struggles, in a dynamic and globalized artistic field increasingly transformed by the digital revolution, temporary mobility attractors deserve our attention.
This publication attempts to shift practices of thought toward both critical realism and new materialism. It is neither committed to today’s wishful thinking regarding horizontalized networks and deterritorialized structures, nor does it fix itself to determinist approaches. In contrast to twentieth-century constructivist approaches and their epistemic fallacies, materialized verticalities and matter-based, infrastructural spaces are brought to the fore.
This book is the result of four years of collaborative work that focused on topics of affect, the return of history, ecology, and art and its markets in today’s power law–based economies. These themes triggered not only the development of new artworks but also gave rise to reflexive discourses and discussions surrounding art theory, philosophy, sociology, and economics. The book contains a visual documentation of a number of group shows—which also included the works of winners of the Daniel Frese Prize—at Agathenburg Castle, Halle für Kunst Lüneburg, Kunstraum of Leuphana University of Lüneburg, and Kunstverein Springhornhof. The contributions by critics, curators, theoreticians, and scientists include essays and in-depth conversations.
Works by Art Club 2000, Patterson Beckwith, J. St. Bernard, Angela Bulloch, Daniel Buren, Merlin Carpenter, Gordon Castellane, Diego Castro, Nicolas Ceccaldi, Jeremiah Day, Stephan Dillemuth, John Dogg, Maria Eichhorn, Jana Euler, Loretta Fahrenholz, Renée Green, Karl Holmqvist, Gilta Jansen, Monika Jarecka, Tobias Kaspar, Carola Keitel, Jackie McAllister, Josephine Meckseper, Dirk Meinzer, James Meyer, Shana Moulton, nOffice, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Fabian Reimann, Carissa Rodriguez, Megan Francis Sullivan, Katja Staats, Simon Starling, Buffy Summers, Jan Timme, Daniela Töbelmann, Niko Wolf, Amelie von Wulffen, Phillip Zach
Copublished with Leuphana University of Lüneburg
Design and infographics by Sina Hurnik and Kerstin Warncke
2014, German/English
Softcover, 280 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$29.00 - In stock -
Over the past years, Berlin has become an important center for the international production of art and theory. English is firmly entrenched as its second language, and it attracts an unending inflow of newcomers. An informal economy, ample resources of time and space, the intense debates that are said to take place here, and its bohemian aura are still crucial to its attractiveness. But doesn’t Berlin’s allure derive from expectations created by realities of the 1990s and 2000s that no longer exist? Berlin’s current remodeling in line with a representational and economic agenda was already being planned as others still put their faith in the transgressive potential of parallel “underground” worlds. It is time for an assessment without nostalgia or resignation: for a Berlin Update.
This issue of TEXTE ZUR KUNST investigates recent developments in Berlin that also stand paradigmatically for structural transformations of the art world, academia, and the general conditions of life and work. As economization and flexibilization, along with formerly ‘alternative’ project culture, are spreading to the core of institutions, the interrelation between the public sphere, the city, knowledge, and the markets changes drastically. Our authors discuss the conditions artists and curators face when working in and outside of Berlin’s art institutions; they examine the bohemian art scene’s tendency to blend into the VIP zone that has formed in recent years; they criticize the exhibition and collection politics of Berlin’s museums; and they investigate new tendencies and sites in the production of theory, art, music, and nightlife in the city. And not at last we ask what remains of the local in a globally networked (art) world.
Plus a picture spread by Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff and reviews from Berlin, Chicago, Copenhagen, Frankfurt/M., Geneva, New York, Siegen, Stuttgart, and Zurich. Exclusive new artists’ editions by Axel Hütte and K.O. Götz.
English content:
Preface
Main Section
Isabelle Graw
“The Myth of Remoteness from the Market. Notes on Berlin’s Rise as an Art Metropolis”
“Under the Shadow of Projects”
A roundtable discussion with Heike-Karin Föll, Juan Gaitán, Christoph Gurk and Florian Wüst, moderated by Philipp Ekardt and Hanna Magauer
Susanne von Falkenhausen
“Statement on the Exhibition and Collection Politics of the Berlin National Gallery”
“Berlin Theory”
A survey with Barbara Wittmann, Alexander García Düttmann, Frank Ruda, Peter Geimer and Maria Muhle
Philipp Ekardt
“The New Pragmatists. On Times and New Theater”
Pablo Larios
“Blackout. On White Material Records”
Paul Feigelfeld
“The Cloud Over Berlin. Two Remarks on the Archaeology and Present of Digital Rights”
Short Cuts
“On the Significance of Textiles in Contemporary Thought and Praxis”
A survey by S. Buchmann and R. Frank with T. Smith, A. Mendizabal, M. Kapustka/A. Reineke/A. Röhl/T. Weddigen, J. Raum, L. Antunes, K. Kouoh, I. Below
Reviews
John Beeson
“Where Failure is Proof of Wrongdoing”
On The Essential Ellen Willis
Gili Tal
“The Place Beyond One’s Prime”
On Timothy Davies at Sandy Brown, Berlin
Jenni Sorkin
“Still Waiting”
On Faith Wilding at Threewalls, Chicago
Andrew Stefan Weiner
“Photoconceptualism Pure and Impure”
On Christopher Williams at the Art Institute of Chicago
Carson Chan
“Growers and Showers”
On Eddie Peake at Peres Projects, Berlin
Brigid Doherty
“Titles and Compositions”
On Rosemarie Trockel at Gladstone Gallery, New York
Sven Lütticken
“A Retrospective With Eight Legs”
On Superflex at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen
Piper Marshall
“The Costliness of Our Attachments”
On Bad Conscience at Metro Pictures, New York
Jacob King
“Signifying Friendship”
On Macho Man, Tell It To My Heart at Artists Space, New York
Obituaries
Alena J. Williams
“Productive Estrangements. Remembering Nancy Holt (1938–2014)”
Artists’ Editions
Axel Hütte
Ca’Corner della Regina-3, 2012/2014
K.O. Götz
Siekri 12, 2014
2013, German/English
Softcover, 280 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$32.00 - In stock -
Under the motto “How we aim to work,” the June issue of Texte zur Kunst brings together contributions by authors who have been associated with the magazine for a long time and who have shaped its debates along the way. Instead of specifying a thematic focus, we left it to the contributors to decide which questions relating to their current research interests they wanted to address—themes for which, faced with the deadlines always bearing down on them, the authors usually don’t find time. It is precisely the conditions out of which their texts developed and the different formats of these contributions—from collaborative authorship; to narrative, literary essays; all the way to monographic and performative, artistic treatises—that stand for a different approach to the fields of university research, project-oriented collaborations, or artistic dealings. Such an approach would run counter to the often sobering coercion of activity and effectiveness that characterizes working conditions today. All of the contributions show that a strategy of countering this imperative of activity can derive from pursuing long-term modes of working and thought in a targeted way and from investing in a project intensively over a longer period of time. Not only does the longstanding commitment of these authors to Texte zur Kunst mark such an endeavor, but with their “work samples” in this issue, they also grant us insight into the themes they are currently working on: Instead of bowing to the pressure of presenting only finished products, they stress the potential that lies in making work processes visible and putting them up for debate. “How we aim to work” can therefore be understood as both a question that we pose ourselves and as a public appeal.
Plus a picture spread by Dierk Schmidt and reviews from Berlin, Cincinnati, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt/Main, Liverpool, Los Angeles, Madrid, Margate (GB), New York, Nuremberg, Oberhausen, and Paris.
Exclusive new artists’ editions by Matias Faldbakken and Wade Guyton.
English Content
Preface
Main Section
Tom Holert
Postscript on the Societies of Comfort
Jutta Koether
Starting from the Picture
Seat of Power—A Picture of Being a Woman Artist
Beate Söntgen
Why Diderot?
A Project Outline
Helmut Draxler
Taking Part in the Other
Politics and Structural Ambivalence
Sabeth Buchmann & Constanze Ruhm
Subject Put to the Test
Rainer Bellenbaum
Disco, Drift, Tent, Choir
On Elizabeth Price’s Videos
Sven Lütticken
Research Objectives
Or: The Art of Obstruction
Clemens Krümmel
A Minor Ninth That Nobody Wants
On the Henry Flynt Exhibitions “Activities 1959–” in Düsseldorf and Karlsruhe
Short Cuts
Still One of Us?
Isabelle Graw asks Julia Gelshorn, Sebastian Egenhofer, Fiona McGovern, and Chris Reitz about the current reception of Martin Kippenberger.
Reviews
Christodoulos Panayiotou
Closer Distances
On Disabled Theater by Jérôme Bel
Marina Vishmidt
A Rapid Inventory of the Universe
On Rosa Barba at Turner Contemporary, Margate
Philipp Ekardt
Makeup Collage
On Linder at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Adrienne Rooney
Who Knows Nothing?
On John Finneran at Canal 47, New York
Alex Kitnick
Pop Pyramid
On Derek Boshier at Thomas Solomon Gallery, Los Angeles
David Reisman
Teamwork
On Thomas Bayrle at The Artist’s Institute, New York
André Rottmann
Complicity and Contestation
On Andrea Fraser at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Petra Lange-Berndt
Unmaking Normality
On “Glam! The Performance of Style” at Tate Liverpool
Michael Darling
Photosensitive
On James Welling at the Cincinnati Art Museum
Pedro de Llano
The Sentient Memory of Latin America
On “Losing the human form” at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
Artists’ Editions
Matias Faldbakken
Jerry Can Cut, 2013
Wade Guyton
IMG_1919.JPG, 2013
2012, German/English
Softcover, 287 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$29.00 - Out of stock
The June issue of Texte zur Kunst is dedicated to the curator, a figure in the art field that has gained authority over the past two decades. Ever since Harald Szeemann’s trendsetting documenta 5 (1972), “the independent curator” has counted as a new preeminent player in the art world. No longer employed by a museum but instead an initiator and author of project-based presentations at various institutions, the figure of the curator is also associated with the emergence of thematic group shows in which artworks, everyday objects, and documents, as equally treated exhibits, are meant to illustrate a hypothetical curatorial concept. In the art world of the 1990s—which was characterized by relations and interdisciplinarity, contexts and displays—curatorial activities were both popularized and professionalized. Curators increasingly acted as skilled networkers whose influence also grew due to the rising number of international biennials. At the same time, the notion of the curator or of curating has expanded beyond the confined boundaries of the art field and can now be found in all areas of cultural production. Against this backdrop the June issue of Texte zur Kunst examines how this rapid rise came about and what curatorial power really means. Thus, a perspective is opened that allows taking a fundamental look at the hegemonic structures in the art business and its effects.
Plus reviews from Berlin, Bregenz, Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, New York, Siegen, Vienna, and Winterthur.
Exclusive new artists’ editions:
Nick Mauss, Thomas Ruff, and Imi Knoebel
English content
Preface
Oliver Marchart
The Curatorial Subject
The figure of the curator between individuality and collectivity
Beatrice von Bismarck
Curating Curators
Between Art and Public
A roundtable conversation with Natasa Ilic, Maria Lind, Nicolaus Schafhausen, and Jakob Schillinger
Sabeth Buchmann
29,687
Lucy R. Lippard: Curating (Within) the System
Heinz Bude
The Curator as Meta-Artist
The case of HUO
Values and Interests
Survey among artists on the relationship to curators, with contributions by Monica Bonvicini, Claire Fontaine, Mariechen Danz, Olaf Nicolai, Adrian Piper, Thomas Scheibitz
Dieter Roelstraete
Art Work
Some notes on status anxiety
Reviews
Mark Prince
Through a Looking Glass
On John Smith at Tanya Leighton, Berlin, and Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover
John Beeson
Kill yr. Idols
On You Killed Me First at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
Tal Sterngast
Attention, Deficit, Disorder
On Dirk Bell at Sadie Coles HQ, London
Comments on the 7th Berlin Biennial By Sven Lütticken, Margarita Tupitsyn, and Victor Tupitsyn
Pedro De Llano
Eggs Theory
On Hans Haacke at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
Liz Kotz
Back to Basics
On Madison Brookshire and Tashi Wada at the Wulf., Los Angeles
Antek Walczak
Rites of Spring
On the Whitney Biennial 2012 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Mark Dion & Gareth James
Jackie McAllister – Silence with Great Eloquence
Artists’ Editions
Nick Mauss
Not another word for it, 2012
Thomas Ruff
Porträt 1989 (I. Graw), 1989/2012
Imi Knoebel
Anima Mundi, 2012