HANS ULRICH OBRIST

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Curating* But Were Afraid to Ask

April Elizabeth Lamm

Everything you ever wanted to know about Hans Ulrich Obrist but were afraid to ask has now been asked, revealing the truth from the beginning of his career as a young curator in his Zurich kitchen to his recent position as co-director of the Serpentine in London. This book is a “production of reality conversations,” otherwise known as interviews. It undertakes the impossible: pinning down this peripatetic curator, and affirming the wisdom of an artist who told Obrist “don’t go” when he contemplated leaving the art world for other fields. Interviews by Jean Max Colard, Robert Fleck, Jefferson Hack, Nav Haq, Sophia Krzys Acord, Brendan McGetrick, Ingo Niermann, Paul O’Neill, Philippe Parreno & Alex Poots, Juri Steiner, Gavin Wade, et al.

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ON PRODUCTIVE SHAME, RECONCILIATION, AND AGENCY

Suzana Milevska (Ed.)

New from the noted Academy of Fine Arts Vienna series, this timely collection of essays on shame, reconciliation and agency addresses how ethnic difference, race, class, gender and sexuality shape reconciliation. To better understand the complexity of negotiating reconciliation in different societies and cultures as well as the ethical and methodological issues embedded in art-based research projects, this dense and provocative reader presents a variety of contributions, discussions and interviews in a variety of theoretical frameworks from Viennese artist/photographer Tal Adler, Hungarian curator Timea Junghaus and South African scholar Trevor Ngwane, among many others. Case studies and artistic projects explore collaborative and participatory research methods analyzing practices that turn shame into productive agency to prevent the recurrence of the institutional structures, patterns and events constitutive of racism in Europe and Africa. A poignent subject as we enter into a time, once again, when nationalism and intolerance are sweeping the globe.

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OSLO, NORWAY

John Holten

Ida Bencke (Ed.)

Following his critically acclaimed debut novel, The Readymades, Irish artist, writer and cofounder of Broken Dimanche Press John Holten tells an intriguing story of love and loss that begins in the affluent and fast-growing city of Oslo and ends outside of historical time and space, taking in the history of oil exploration, Norse mythology, coronal mass ejections and post-apocalyptic landscapes. Holten places himself directly in the book as both narrator and first reader, highlighting the discrepancy between maps and the territory they represent. The story is recounted in over 39 chapters, each named after various streets and environs of the city of Oslo, followed by a legend that unlocks and provides information from the preceding narrative in a revealing interplay between reality and fiction. Inviting a nonlinear reading, Holten has galvanized a new type of literary experience that is open-ended, multilayered and wholly contemporary.

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OTRA DE VAQUEROS

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Outsourced Critics & Critical Conversations in a Limo

Art Fairs, Conversations, and Essays

Holly Crawford

What would you say if you were allowed an hour in a limousine and a bottle of champagne with one of the art world s heavy hitters? Nervous laughter and unexpected conversation are just what was intended in Critical Conversations in a Limo, a 2006 project in which strangers, curators and critics were brought together in transit between New York art fairs and prompted to talk about inclusion and exclusion in art fair culture. In this humorous companion book, individuals based outside the New York scene were invited to contribute a piece based on their impressions of the Armory Show catalog. Participants include artist Orlan, Nelson-Atkins director Julián Zugazagoita, Bronx Museum director Holly Block, critic and historian Sven Lutticken, Kortun, Cabinet editor Sina Najafi and New Museum curator Anne Barlow, among others.

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OVERWRITE

Ethics of Knowledge—Poetics of Existence
Armen Avanessian

Bernd Klöckener (Ed.)

Is it possible that the depression and feelings of insufficiency academics experience in response to the constant pressures to innovate are symptoms of the university’s original ideals? Austrian philosopher and literary and political theorist Armen Avanessian (b. 1973, Vienna) argues in this slim softcover publication that an ethical dimension of knowledge can produce a new reality. Overwrite: Ethics of Knowledge—Poetics of Existence is about writing differently in order to situate oneself in the world differently. It is a book about how new truths are produced when a subject takes responsibility for his/her thinking, experiences and conflicts. When a subject rewrites and overwrites itself, it becomes an “other,“ transforming the world in the process. Armen Avanessian is a noted visiting professor of political theory at Yale and Columbia Universities.

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PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF

The Medium in the Post-Medium Condition

Isabelle Graw & Ewa Lajer-Burcharth (Eds.)

In response to recent developments in pictorial practice and critical discourse, Painting beyond Itself: The Medium in the Post-Medium Condition seeks to historicize and propose new approaches to the question of medium. This book—the second this season from the highly respected series from the Institut für Kunstkritik—is based on two conferences, one at Harvard University and the other in Berlin, which focused on the changing role of the medium in establishing painting as a privileged practice, discourse and institution of modernity. Bringing together an international group of scholars, critics, and artists, Painting beyond Itself,/i> is a forum for a rich historical, theoretical and practice-grounded conversation. Organized by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Harvard University and Isabelle Graw, Städelschule, Frankfurt. Contributors include Carol Armstrong, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Sabeth Buchmann, René Démoris, Isabelle Graw, David Joselit, Jutta Koether, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Julie Mehretu, Matt Saunders and Amy Sillman.

STERNBERG PRESS, BERLIN
INSTITUT FÜR KUNSTKRITIK, FRANKFURT
2016 / Softcover
4 3/4 x 7 1/2 inches / 288 pp / 37 b&w
ISBN: 978-3-95679-007-2 · Retail Price: $22.00

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