Trans Perspectives
Trans artists are increasingly represented and recognized in the world of art and culture, including at last year’s Venice Biennale. At the same time, violence against trans individuals is also becoming more visible. The connection between these social and political developments and the art world is the focus of the new issue of TEXTE ZUR KUNST, “Trans Perspectives.” Conceived in collaboration with Luce deLire, the issue contains reflections by trans artists and writers on transmisogyny and intersections between racism, anti-Semitism, and transphobia in the art field as well as the potentials of (digital) spaces and (artistic) practices for trans people. Interweaving lived experiences with theoretical considerations such as critiques of the politics of visibility and institutions, the contributors describe how trans materializes in an art world that is inherently defined by numerous mechanisms of exclusion.
Main section:
P. Staff, Kiyan Williams, and Jeanne Vaccaro (Conversation)
The Moon is Trans: On Cultivating an Aesthetics of Reaching
Luce deLire
Beyond Representational Justice
Farah Thompson
Beyond The Canon: Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s Black and Trans Rebellion
Lex Morgan Lancaster
Trans Abstractions, Decomposing Figurations: Young Joon Kwak and Kiyan Williams
Kübra Uzun, Chris E. Vargas, Vidisha-Fadescha, Luce deLire (Roundtable)
You are Compensated in Exposure and Nothing More
Hil Malatino
Weathering: Slow Arts of Trans Endurance
Jules Gleeson
Kim Petras’s Obscene Pursuit of the Ordinary
Ginevra Shay
Fragments of a Missing Intersex Archive
Maxi Wallenhorst
The Anatomist, the Poet
Aristilde Kirby
Tulipmania - Mk.II: For the Life of Me
Reviews
Jo Giardini on Wu Tsang’s MOBY DICK; or, The Whale
Thalia Cox on Leila Hekmat at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin
McKenzie Wark on Greer Lankton at Company Gallery, New York
Mine Pleasure Bouvar on Toni Ebel at Sonntags-Club e.V., Berlin
Elena Comay del Junco on Catalina Schliebener Muñoz at Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, New York
Isobel Ward on Jamie Crewe’s video work False Wife
Image spread: Andrea Illés, Pippa Garner, Katayoun Jalilipour, Ebun Sodipo, El Palomar, Raju Rage and Nad MA
Artists’ editions: Cecily Brown, Sanya Kantarovsky, and Spencer Sweeney
Upcoming issues:
TZK 130, June, “Ohnmacht”
The German term “Ohnmacht” (medically: syncope, or fainting; literally: without-power) combines the perceived inability to act with a residual agency. Instrumentalizing this term as an analytical tool, the June issue of TEXTE ZUR KUNST negotiates the notion of “Ohnmacht” not only as a philosophical concept in relation to art and cultural-historical artifacts but also as an emotional condition of our present, which results from the intersection of various crises. The aim is to sound out the relationship between powerlessness and empowerment from different perspectives without losing sight of diverging degrees of privilege.
TZK 131, September, “Reviews”
Where does art criticism stand today? What is its function for academia, for the art market, for value production? And under what conditions does it constitute an independent literary genre? Expanding our review section, the September issue of TEXTE ZUR KUNST counters the tendency toward affirmative art writing by bringing together a multitude of elaborate reviews that not only evaluate current cultural productions but also reflect on the function and status of criticism itself.
TZK 132, December, “Lust”
For a long time, bodily pleasure was not a particularly desirable category in art history, art criticism, or aesthetic theory. In postmodern models of artistic value production, art that dismisses immediate bodily pleasure is held in higher esteem. Contrary to such a disqualification, this December issue of TEXTE ZUR KUNST addresses the critical potential of pleasure precisely in its carnality and immediacy. While an intimate feeling, pleasure is conditioned by our being affected by other objects—thus pointing to the relationality of our bodies—and, as this issue will show, it also holds the potential to create new, unforeseen connections in the social.
