frieze issue 148:
social currency
The summer issue of frieze asks: how does art influence society?
‘Artists are still the canaries in the mine of gentrification’ – Sharon Zukin.
In Changing Places, Dan Fox talks to Nils Norman, Timotheus Vermeulen, Anton Vidokle, and Sharon Zukin about art, gentrification, and artistic freedom as the role art plays in city economies becomes increasingly complex.
Life Models: Professor of art history at Barnard College and Columbia University, Alexander Alberro, asks what kind of role does art actually play in society? ‘The primary aim of art is to defamiliarize, to estrange the viewer or reader form habits of understanding, troubling that which seems patently acceptable in cultural terms.’
John Waters talks to Drew Daniel about sex, death, God, the art world, and how he has dealt with taste and transgression for close to 50 years.
‘Art is like joining a biker gang; you have to wear a certain outfit and learn a certain lingo. It’s a special club.’
Signs of the Times: Tom Morton looks at how Matthew Darbyshire‘s architectural interventions, installations and consumer objects reveal the gap between what is promised by those who shape our worlds and what is actually on offer.
Delhi City Report: Devika Singh and The Raqs Media Collective consider the expansion of the art scene in the Indian capital, where a sense of adventure and DIY ethics are yielding interesting results.
A Post-Industrial Paradox: A specially commissioned project for frieze by La Toya Ruby Frazier.
Also in the May Issue:
Life in Architecture: In the first in an occasional series in which frieze invites an artist, curator, or writer to discuss the buildings and environments that have most influenced them, Pablo Bronstein reflects on the architecture of Neasden, northwest London; his grandmother’s house in Buenos Aires; and the 19th-century Italianate National Trust property, Cliveden, in Buckinghamshire.
Influences: Chris Kraus in conversation with her long-time friend and editor Hedi El Kholti about the books, authors, and landscapes that have influence her as a writer and filmmaker.
Picture Piece: Luc Sante – A postcard from Gering, Nebraska
Questionnaire: Amalia Pica
Exhibition Reviews: 41 reviews from 24 cities in 15 countries, including Jennifer Higgie on Damien Hirst at Tate Modern, London; Christy Lange on the 7th Berlin Biennale; Ian Chang on Requiem for the Sun at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles; and Paul Teasdale on the 4th Marrakech Biennale.
Plus: Brian Bress, Andy Holden, Tamara Kuselman, and Nicoline von Harskamp. Jennifer Allen on art and the cold war; George Pendle‘s brief history of deadly art; Kaelen Wilson-Goldie considers one woman’s protest in Damascus; Adam Kleinman on the iconography of the wealthy; Peter Coviello asks when does bar-room debate count as criticism? Whilst Dieter Roelstraete considers whether today’s art is too self referential and Gemma Sieff traces the legacy of Bertolt Brecht in the media today. Plus, Geeta Dayal talks to Brian Eno, Holger Czukay, and others about working with radical music producer Conny Plank.
Highlights from frieze.com:
Frieze Video: A specially commissioned interview with John Waters and a visual essay by Dan Fox.
On the frieze blog:
- Frieze editors on dOCUMENTA (13)
- A survey of art critics in the media
- Erik Morse interviews Danish chef René Redzepi of the so-called world’s best restaurant, noma
- Censorship in South Africa by Sean O’Toole
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