50 Minus 1
Afterall is pleased to present issue 50, Autumn/Winter 2020, 50 Minus 1. This fiftieth edition of Afterall journal has been produced amid the many turbulences—immunological, social and political—that have marked 2020. Faced with these crises and the uncertainties they have brought about while also working under the sign of a jubilee publication, our editorial group found itself certain of at least one thing: publishing as usual was no option.
For this experimental edition the seven editors of Afterall have each written texts and commissioned essays responding to the strangeness of these critical times. Each editor’s contribution highlights seven works of art that in some way feel significant, powerful and appropriate now. We had planned to round up this selection by choosing a 50th work together, and yet we found that the attempt to do so seemed to undermine the issue’s underlying premise of disjuncture. The lacuna of 50 Minus 1 on reflection seems apposite, consequential even.
In 50 Minus 1 Ute Meta Bauer and Ana Salazar have selected seven moving-image artworks that dwell on systemic violence and oppression—by Alain Resnais and Marguerite Duras, Isaac Julien, Chantal Akerman, Raoul Peck, Zarina Bhimji, Amar Kanwar and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Taking a diaristic form, Amanda Carneiro’s text discusses works by Adrian Piper, Belkis Ayón, Dalton Paula, Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Rosana Paulino, Black Quantum Futurism and Lorna Simpson, pieces that appear to leave lasting and disturbing traces in their wake in contrast to the experience typically generated by screens. Nav Haq’s discussion of artworks by Shilpa Gupta, Derek Jarman, Jeremy Deller, Nam June Paik, Robert Cailliau, Sergey Kuryokhin and Sergey Sholokhov, with a commissioned text by Laura Grace Ford, is set in relation to the “Black Swan” theory and the potential for art to address and embrace ambiguity and interrogate systems of knowledge. Amber Husain looks at a range of works by Vladimir Tatlin, Valdis Celms, Lyubov Popova, Hito Steyerl, Netochka Nezvanova, Lygia Pape which question how the virtual can be recruited as a means of manifesting the “virtual” capacities and limits of artworks that have not been, could not be or will not ever be “actualised,” a discussion which also includes a commissioned interview of speculative designers Dunne & Raby by Elvia Wilk. Mark Lewis returns to the complex history of iconoclasm and monumentality in light of its current urgency and the increased political stakes around legacies of state-imposed racism and individual and collective responsibilities. He juxtaposes this with works by Mark Bradford, Ed Ruscha, William H. Johnson, Julie Dash, Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza, David Hammons and Kara Walker. Adeena Mey examines works produced as non-originals or unfolding from remains—reproduced, recast or resampled—and how they might speak to a non-linear conception of time, and suggest ways to reinhabit the world differently. Covered are Stan VanDerBeek, The Colloquy of Mobiles, Pratchaya Phinthong, Sung Tieu, Chloé Delarue, as well as commissioned essays by Dana Liljegren on Ndary Lô and by Vuth Lyno on the White Building. Finally, Charles Stankievech, with Dehlia Hannah, Ala Roushan and Nadim Samman, returns to the style of the German Romantic fragment to explore imaginary places, inhabited by imaginary creatures, and arguments that might or might not apply to alternative worlds. The piece includes Francisco Goya, the Sacred Cave of Kamukuwaká, Dorothea Tanning, Marguerite Humeau, Morehshin Allahyari, Julian Charrière, Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind.
Afterall issue 50 will be launched online, with various events to be announced through our newsletter and website.
Afterall Books’ latest titles in the One Work series are Mark Leckey: Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore by Mitch Speed; Sharon Lockhart: Pine Flat by Howard Singerman. Its two forthcoming titles are Beverly Buchanan: Marsh Ruins by Amelia Groom and Pierre Huyghe: Human Mask by Mark Lewis. The latest titles in Afterall’s Exhibition Histories series are Uncooperative Contemporaries: Art Exhibitions in Shanghai c.2000 and FESTAC ’77: The Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture.
Afterall journal is published by Central Saint Martins, London, in editorial partnership with M HKA, Antwerp; the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore; the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto, and in association with the University of Chicago Press.
Afterall is now available as an e-book edition, free to download for subscribers. Subscribe here.
