Happy New Year, dear reader!
Now 2018 has roared and sputtered into 2019 in high waves, tidal rapids, reversing falls, and strange stagnations. Here on earth and in our various halls and ecosystems and theaters, many banana peels—and much worse—got strewn across the aisles and shores along the way. But if you’re reading, then, hello, you’ve made it and—lucky us—so have we.
There is and has been cause also to be merry. At e-flux journal, we are overjoyed to officially begin our second decade. Leading up to this new year, we brought you through the illustrated adventures of e-flux journal #95—WONDERFLUX. You may have found yourself in front of disappearing mirrors held up to curators, critics, and artists; sailing through counterfactual universes; face-to-face with cold-blooded killers, faceless men, weary but buoyant prophets; all the while imbued with stubborn thriving and and stubborn refusals to be moved or monetized, and once and a while having earnest conversations with robot(s and) workers. But, if you missed any of these moments in the rush toward the future, you can read them all now, with an eye this time toward the new year(s) ahead:
WONDERFLUX—a decade of e-flux journal
Liam Gillick—“What’s a Mirror For?”
Reza Negarestani and Keith Tilford—“Chronosis: Exordium”
Keller Easterling, illustrated by Meijia Xu—“If You Are Lucky”
Hu Fang, illustrated by Mojo Wang—“Faceless Man”
Franco “Bifo” Berardi, illustrated by Andrew Alexander—“The End of Prophecy”
Elizabeth A, Povinelli, illustrated by Clara Bessijelle Johansson—“Stubborn”
Raqs Media Collective, illustrated by Freddy Carrasco—“Workers and Robots Enter a Factory Canteen”
… to be continued.
These adventures are really just beginning. Keep your optic nerves attuned: surprise additions to WONDERFLUX may well yet be forthcoming, and all of the illustrated essays will be amplified, brought onto pages in full color, and even coming soon, somewhere between 2- and 3-D, to an institution that is perhaps near you.
Meanwhile, we are wishing you oceanic joy this year.
Back in 2009, the editorial of e-flux journal issue #00 closed like this:
“War, trauma, culture, language will not slide over oiled tracks of communication, and some solids refuse to melt into air. But perhaps it is here, in the attempt at translation—in the open engagement with its uselessness through stammering, mumbling, scrawling attempts—that one might suggest that art can provide a means of discovering and negotiating with the nature of these basic contingencies.”
So on to the next decade ahead. In the next new months you can find us conferring on the future—on art after culture—in cities like Rotterdam, Paris, Beijing, and Berlin. And, as always, we can find each other here, from screen to screen.
Excelsior! and everything else,
And a very happy 2019 to you
from everyone at e-flux journal:
Anton Vidokle, Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Kaye Cain-Nielsen
Mariana Silva, Michael Andrews, Elvia Wilk, Andreas Petrossiants
And WONDERFLUX guest art director, Tyler Boss
PS: for the aurally inclined, listen to our latest podcasts on the coming and past years of e-flux journal.