Afterall Issue 9
Afterall
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Afterall Issue 9
Joan Jonas
Essays: Martin Kremer and Susan Morgan
Michael Clark
Essays: Suzanne Cotter and Catherine Wood
Marjetica Potrc
Essays: Jan Verwoert and Julieta Gonzalez
Los Carpinteros
Essays: Jorge Reynoso Pohlenz and Marilyn Zeitlin
Thomas Hirschhorn
Essays: Jan Estep and Simon Sheikh
Essays: Thomas Lawson, Desperate Daydreams, and Marius Babias, Subject production and political art practice.
We are pleased to announce the publication of Afterall issue 9. The word ‘performative’ haunts this issue of Afterall, both in the sense of physical activity, and in the more abstract idea of an effective outcome. The artists discussed all push the limits of their practice in an attempt to find a currently satisfactory justification for making work. In his introductory essay Thomas Lawson places this in a historical context, by looking at early avant-garde performances, while Marius Babias discusses the potential for political action in recent art in his closing piece.
To comprehend Michael Clark and Joan Jonas as performative is self-evident. To read Marjetica Potrc, Thomas Hirschhorn and Los Carpinteros as such is more complicated and certainly more distanced; here performance is located somewhere between the interaction of the public to a representation of everyday life, and the experience of that life itself. Reversing the question, the work of Michael Clark can be seen to engage similar issues of representation in as much as his quotations of popular music, classical ballet or high fashion trigger a recognition of everyday culture and transform the untouchably high art of dance to life choices made by its audience. Similarly, Joan Jonas’s work bridges the political and physical by creating poetic fictions that play in both real time and recorded time, in a space that includes the audience.
Afterall is a journal of contemporary art published twice a year in London and Los Angeles. In each issue the editors feature five artists whose work we find compelling, with the idea that the juxtaposition of very different bodies of work adds to the interpretation and understanding of each practice. We hope you enjoy the issue!
For further information please contact Emily Pethick (UK/Europe/Worldwide) on tel +44 (0) 20 7514 7212, fax +44 (0)20 7514 7166, e-mail London@afterall.org; or Zoe Crosher (US/Canada/Central America/South America) on tel +1 661 259 5871, fax: +1661 253 7738 e-mail: losangeles@afterall.org
