examines the long noirish shadows the Cold War still casts over our current moment.
e-flux Index #1, 420 pp., full color, 20 x 25.5 cm, ISSN: 2997-1950, May 2024
Index #1
e-flux was started somewhat accidentally in 1999. The original plan was simple: to help artists and curators disseminate information about their exhibitions via e-mail. However, very quickly our readership snowballed, and it became apparent that many people wanted to get something more from e-flux in addition to exhibition press releases. Our first publishing experiment was the insertion of a love letter by an artist in an edition of the then-popular Parkett Magazine. What followed was a series of projects and books that placed a significant emphasis on text: The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By An Artist, the Martha Rosler Library, DO IT, and many others. In 2005 we organized a free experimental school in Berlin called unitednationsplaza. This project, more than anything else we had undertaken up to this point, underlined the interest in and need for critical discourse in the arts.
In 2008 we started e-flux journal, which focuses on writings by artists and thinkers interested in theory and society. Shortly thereafter we started commissioning exhibition reviews, which evolved into e-flux Criticism. A little later we started commissioning texts on art education and its institutions, and in 2016 we launched e-flux Architecture—a publication dedicated to critical theory in the field of architecture and urban studies. Most recently, during the Covid pandemic in 2020, we launched e-flux Notes—a platform for urgent, short-form writing on art, politics, and theory.
All of these publishing platforms developed at different times, and grew independently of each other. For the most part they also have their own respective readerships, which do not intersect much, despite the fact that much of the content from all these publication strands is interrelated and addresses overlapping concerns and interests. The goal of e-flux Index is therefore to bring all this together in one body for the most voracious readers in the world! We hope that you enjoy this first issue of e-flux Index, ahead of many more to come.
— Anton Vidokle
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9 ChaptersMarch 2024
Archives of our own global destruction
With: Peter Sealy, Jacinda S. Tran, Manuel J. Borja-Villel, Vasıf Kortun and Yuriko Furuhata
Living with Ghosts
With: Xinyue Liu, Boris Groys, Juliana Halpert, Zdenka Badovinac, Christian Nyampeta and Feza Kayungu Ramazani
explores the domain of the many specters and ghosts (both friendly and malevolent) with whom we are forced to cohabit.
Becoming One's Own Ancestor
With: Nicole Starosielski, Iago Bojczuk, Nkule Mabaso, Serubiri Moses, Pietro Bianchi, Sonia D’Alto and Jennifer Piejko
gathers pieces that yogically stretch and expand the limits of the human body, of embodiment, and of “the human” itself.
The Perpetual Peace of the Graveyard
With: Sami Khatib, Oxana Timofeeva, Jenny Wu, Sandra Neugärtner and Novuyo Moyo
addresses the myriad contemporary forms of psychic and physical violence, from wars fought in the name of “civilization” to the impossibility of actually depicting peace.
Tomorrow we will not work
With: Matteo Pasquinelli, Jason E. Smith, R.H. Lossin, Nathan Brown, Evan Calder Williams, R.H. Lossin and Christoph Menke
shuttles between the radical forms of go-slow, quiet quitting, and social refusal that comprise the decision to down tools.
The Nurse Log
With: Kim Förster, Stephanie Bailey, Laila Seewang, Aziba Ekio and Michael Kurtz
purloins its title from silviculture forestry terminology to examine the manifold paradoxes of sustainability, ecology, wastage, and re-usage.
The Polycrisis
With: Dorota Jagoda Michalska, Judith Wilkinson, Kate Sutton, Artemy Magun, Paul Stephens and Tausif Noor
groups together pieces which engage questions of cosmopolitanism, nationalism, and neocolonial territorialization.
Counter-citational Models
With: Octavian Esanu, Angela Harutyunyan, Olexii Kuchanskyi, David Morris, Valentin Diaconov and Gracie Hadland
turns to examine the little nations of the museum, opening up onto larger questions of exhibition-making and curatorial strategy.
Benches Out of Snow
With: Katherine C. M. Adams, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ikko Kobayashi, Fumi Kashimura, Jose Rosales, Jörg Heiser, Christ Mukenge, Lydia Schellhammer and Sorana Munsya
collects texts that ask: How to overcome institutional inertia and sclerosis? In different ways, each of these contributions sets out to address the problems of the commons, of living together, and what remains of the public sphere.