Issue no. 23
Available online:
e-flux.com/journal
How to even begin to describe the extraordinary release of energy, subjectivity, and potential witnessed in the Middle East over the past several weeks? After all, it is still going on. But at this point we can provisionally say, following Franco Berardi, that if cognitarians and knowledge workers have been searching for a body—for genuine social, physical, and socioeconomic connections in the midst of a loose field of cursory contact—this body has now manifested itself as more than a mere possibility, and it is a beautiful thing.
In this issue, Suely Rolnik recalls a singing lesson she took in Paris in 1978, when the act of singing a simple song allowed her to rediscover a desire for life. Until that moment, as she realized years later, this desire had been buried beneath a thick shell that had grown around her while living in exile in France after fleeing the military dictatorship in Brazil. Not only did the liberation of this voice mark the moment she decided to return to her home country, the moment was also a discovery of the power of one’s own voice against a brutality that had wound itself inextricably into the workings of a private body and life, a brutality that Rolnik had carried with her regardless of having left the military regime behind. (see full essay here)
In “Camels vs. Google: Revolutions Recreate the Center of the World,” Jon Rich considers the recent revolutions in Cairo and the Middle East as still circulating within a network of fragile assumptions regarding the nature of modernity and democracy. Now supplemented by new regimes of image production and a shift in American cultural dominance from the sphere of consumers to a reign of the “user,” can we really be so certain of the primacy of the pro-democracy protests in the Middle East? (see full essay here)
In the second installment of her extensive three-part series on the “culture class,” Martha Rosler zooms in on Richard Florida as the most prominent protagonist of urban renovation in recent years, with his bestselling book outlining the economic advantages of catering to the new demographic of the “creative class.” But taking into account Florida’s neoliberal deployment of this loosely-knit network of traditionally left-leaning artists, academics, designers, programmers, and so forth, it seems that gay-friendly and “creative” urban landscapes may simply mark a new chapter in a much older narrative of class warfare—this time with artists’ own political ambivalence leading the charge against the disenfranchised. (see full essay here)
Inspired by Tomas Saraceno’s installation Galaxies Forming along Filaments, Like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider’s Web (2008), Bruno Latour looks at the topology of the sphere as an alternative to that of the network. Whereas networks are able to articulate cursory and diffuse forms of connectivity in the midst of an infinite expanse, the sphere can be seen as pointing the advantages of networks to another technology by which local, fragile, and complex “atmospheric conditions” can gain a form of resilience by way of a container within a broader network. How can we then apply the same logic to a means of “recomposing” disciplinary divides in a way that sustains a common vocabulary, yet overcomes established hierarchies? (see full essay here)
Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest reflect on the life and work of Siegfried Giedion, a historian whose work pinpoints a sharp, but mobile border between nature and culture, between thinking and feeling—a border defined more by constant motion than by its actual dissolution. Key to the dynamism of this border for Giedion was a view of history as authorship (rather than progress), an understanding of the language of movement, of the cyclical nature of time, and of science and engineering as cultural production. (see full essay here)
Peter Friedl observes Charles Willson Peale’s famous self-portrait, The Artist in His Museum, to find the artist, naturalist, and American revolutionary having set aside his palette and brushes to invite the viewer into his collection of objects. The artist plays at being a historian, but in a concession to the highly ideological apparatus of the museum, such a figure attempting to present natural and cultural information as objective historical facts also renders himself a historical artifact. (see full essay here)
In the second of his three-part series on “neo-materialism,” Joshua Simon considers how the aura of symbolic value has eclipsed the materiality of objects, transcending concrete application to produce a phantasmic dimension in which commodities assume lifelike characteristics of their own, where shoes, for example, no longer need feet. This has been reflected in a number of works by artists who address this shift in the nature of the commodity with a revised view of objecthood as waste material, as negative capacity, as commodities waiting to be animated by a brand. (see full essay here)
In her response to Paul Chan and Sven Lütticken’s last issue of e-flux journal, Idiot Wind, Lívia Páldi reports on the situation in Hungary, where the incumbent Fidesz Party government has, together with the right-wing press, organized a smear campaign against a group of prominent philosophers. Seen as part of a broader push to withdraw support for public education and the arts, such moves presumably clear the way for the advancement of, in the words of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a “fine, noble, and refined elite.” (see full essay here)
—Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle
The print edition of e-flux journal can now be found at:
Amsterdam: De Appel / Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten Antwerp: M HKA Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Athens: OMMU Aubervilliers: Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers Auckland: split/fountain Austin: Arthouse at the Jones Center Banff: Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre Barcelona: Arts Santa Monica / MACBA Basel: Kunsthalle Basel, Museum fur Gegenwartskunst Bergen: Rakett Bern: Kunsthalle Bern Beijing and Guangzhou: Vitamin Creative Space Beirut: 98weeks Berlin: b_books / Berliner Künstlerprogramm – DAAD / do you read me? / NBK, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein / Pro qm Berlin and Zurich: Motto Bialystok: Arsenal Gallery Birmingham: Eastside Projects / Ikon Gallery Bologna: MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna Bregenz: Kunsthaus Bregenz Bristol: Arnolfini Brussels: Wiels Bucharest: National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest (MNAC) / Pavilion Unicredit Cairo: Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) / Townhouse Gallery Calgary: The New Gallery Cambridge: Wysing Arts Center Chicago: Graham Foundation / The Renaissance Society Dubai: Traffic Dublin: Dublin City, The Hugh Lane / Project Arts Centre Dusseldorf: Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum Frankfurt: Portikus – Städelschule Gdansk: Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Łaźnia Genève: Centre de la Photographie Ghent: S.M.A.K Glasgow: CCA Centre for Contemporary Arts / Sculpture Studios Graz: Grazer Kunstverein / Kunsthaus Graz / para_SITE Gallery Grijon: LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries Hamburg: Kunstverein Helsinki:Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA Hobart: INFLIGHT Hong Kong: Asia Art Archive Istanbul: BAS / DEPO / Platform Garanti Cologne: Kölnischer Kunstverein Kansas: INKubator PRESS Leeds: Pavilion London: Architectural Association/Bedford Press / Gasworks / ICA / Serpentine Gallery/ The Showroom / Visiting Arts Los Angeles: REDCAT Lisbon: Maumaus, Escola de Artes Visuais / Oporto Ljubljana: Moderna Galerija Luxembourg: Casino Luxembourg Marfa: Ballroom Marfa Madrid: Brumaria / CA2M / Pensart Mexico City: Proyectos Monclova Milan: Fondazione Nicola Trussardi Milton Keynes: Milton Keynes Gallery Minneapolis: Walker Arts Center Moscow/ Garage Center for Contemporary Culture Munich: Museum Villa Stuck / Walther Koenig Bookshop, Haus der Kunst Munich New Delhi: Sarai-CSDS New York: e-flux / Independent Curators International (ICI) / Printed Matter, Inc Nottingham: Nottingham Contemporary Omaha: Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts Padona: Fondazione March Paris: castillo/corrales – Section 7 Books / Centre Pompidou / Palais de Tokyo Pori: Pori Art Museum Portland: Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, (PICA) / Publication Studio Prague: Dox Centre for Contemporary Art Prishtina: Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina Providence: AS220 Ramecourt: Performing Arts Forum, St Erme Outre et Ramecourt Reykjavik: Reykjavik Art Museum Riga: Kim? Rio de Janeiro: Capacete Rotterdam: Witte de With Saint-Nazaire: Le Grand Cafe, Centre D’art Contemporain Salzburg: Salzburger Kunstverein San Antonio: Artpace São Paulo: Master in Visual Arts, Faculdade Santa Marcelina Sarajevo: Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art Seoul: The Books / The Book Society Sherbrooke: Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University Sofia: ICA Sofia / Sofia Art Gallery Skopje: Press to Exit Project Space St Louis: White Flag Projects Sydney: Artspace Stockholm: Bonniers Konsthall / Index / Konstfack, University College of Art, Craft and Design Stuttgart: Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart Sydney: Artspace Tallinn: Kumu Art Museum of Estonia Toronto: Mercer Union / The Power Plant Torun: Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Torun Utrecht: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst / Casco-Office for Art, Design and Theory Vaduz: Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein Valletta: Malta Contemporary Art Foundation Vancouver: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia / READ Books, Charles H. Scott Gallery, Emily Carr University of Art and Design Vigo: MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Vigo Vilnius: Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) Vitoria-Gasteiz: Montehermoso Kulturunea Visby: BAC, Baltic Art Center Warsaw: Zachęta National Gallery of Art Wiesbaden: Nassauischer Kunstverein (NKV) Yerevan: Armenian Center For Contemporary Experimental Art, NPAK Zagreb: Gallery Nova / Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic / Institute for Duration, Location and Variables, DeLVe Zurich: Postgraduate Program in Curating, Zürich University of the Arts / Shedhalle / White Space.
