Issue 20 is available now
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Spring 2009Essays
Dieter Roelstraete on the spiritual in art, again
Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti and Eyal Weizman on the future archeology of Israel’s colonization
Lothar Baumgarten
Essays: Juan A. Gaitán and Cornelia Lauf
Enrico David
Essays: Melissa Gronlund and Jan Verwoert
Omer Fast
Essays: Elisabeth Lebovici and Maria Muhle
Goshka Macuga
Essays: Grant Watson and Monika Szewczyk
Events, Works, Exhibitions
Julian Myers on Harald Szeemann’s ‘Der Hang
zum Gesamtkunstwerk’
Stacey Allan on Louise Lawler’s Birdcalls
David Grubbs on Workshop
We are pleased to announce the publication of Afterall issue 20, which marks the 10th anniversary of Afterall.
This issue presents a project by architects Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti and Eyal Weizman in which the architecture and urban structure of the Palestinian territories is reimagined for the time when the Israeli occupation ends. Also in the opening pages, Dieter Roelstraete considers a number of recent exhibitions dealing with the spiritual, mirroring what Roelstraete identifies as a return to a romantic view of art and culture.
In the artists’ section, Juan A. Gaitán and Cornelia Lauf look at Lothar Baumgarten‘s work, setting his post-colonial critique of the treatment of native cultures by Western colonizing powers in relation to his textual engagement with art and to his denunciation of historical ‘facts’. The construction of truth is also the topic of Elisabeth Lebovici and Maria Muhle’s essays on the work of Omer Fast, and on his use of different temporalities and technological framings in order to examine how history or stories are told. Goshka Macuga‘s revisiting of historical events through a variety of curatorial strategies is analysed in Grant Watson’s essay, while Macuga discusses with Monika Szewczyk her current projects — which touch upon Aby Warburg, Robert Morris, Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and the Vietnam War. Finally, Melissa Gronlund and Jan Verwoert explore Enrico David‘s use of vernacular elements of craft and design is his drawings, installations and public sculpture.
In the back section, Julian Myers diagnoses the failed European drive towards utopia as reflected by Harald Szeemann in his 1983 exhibition ‘Der Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerke’; Stacey Allan discovers the contemporary relevance of Louise Lawler’s early feminist soundwork Birdcalls (1972/1981) and David Grubbs remembers his first encounter with Workshop, Kai Althoff and Stephan Abry’s music group.
We are also pleased to announce that, as part of our 10th anniversary celebrations, we will re-launch our website this spring, giving free access to our whole journal archive.
Afterall journal is co-published by Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London and the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, in association with MuHKA, Antwerp.
Issue 20 can be purchased in bookshops accross the UK, Europe and America.
For more information on Afterall or to subscribe, visit our website: www.afterall.org
