THINKING THROUGH PAINTING

Reflexivity and Agency Beyond the Canvas

Isabelle Graw, Daniel Birnbaum & Nikolaus Hirsch (Eds.)

Painting appears to have dispelled its own once-uncontested material basis. No longer synonymous with a flat picture plane hung on the wall, painting in its current incarnations tends instead to emphasize the apparatus of its appearance and the conduits of its circulation. Thinking  through  Painting, from the Institut Für Kunstkritik series, investigates painting’s traits and reception through contri- butions by Peter Geimer and Isabelle Graw. With a focus on Luc Tuymans, Geimer questions the claims commonly made for contemporary painting’s “superior” reflexivity based on its distance from everyday experiences of immersion. Graw situates painting’s residual specificity in the semiotic activity of mark- making rather than materiality, demonstrating that painting’s perseverance is grounded in the suggestion that it can attain agency as a “quasi-person.”

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Thinking Worlds

The Moscow Conference on Philosophy,
Politics and Art

Thinking Worlds brings together contributions from a two-stage symposium organized in conjunction with the second Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art. The thirteen essays included here look at theoretical issues within the field of contemporary art. What is the role of the “event” in this culture? Are artistic interventions politically significant? What is the current status of philosophy and aesthetic theory? And in this era of global political change and market forces in which art is widely considered to be a part of the society of spectacle, what is the actual status of art and its critical discourses? Contributors include Giorgio Agamben, Daniel Birnbaum and Molly Nesbit.

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A THOUSAND EYES

Media Technology, Law and Aesthetics

Marit Paasche and Judy Radul

What questions of representation, judgment and justice cross borders between art and the law? Through the contribution of an all-star roster of artists and scholars – including John Baldessari, Harun Farocki and Dan Graham – this anthology explores how the aesthetics of new media technology affect the judicial system in relation to fundamental concepts such as truth and representation. Since the early twentieth century, the justice system has come to rely on a variety of new representational modes and technologies when considering contemporary art. The law is increasingly staged on a screen and the photographs, video documents, audio recordings used as evidence are not entirely distinct from their correlates in contemporary art, cinema and mass media. Essays by Julie A. Cassiday, Costas Douzinas, Piyel Haldar, Martin Jay, Peter Goodrich, Richard Mohr, Judy Radul, Avital Ronell, Eyal Sivan, Cornelia Vismann. Artistic contributions by John Baldessari, Dan Graham, Harun Farocki, Stan Douglas, Aernout Mik, Agency, Judy Radul, Renzo Martens, Ana Torfs, The Atlas Group, René Magritte, Model Court, Rana Hamadeh, Thomas Demand and Les Levine.

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TO BECOME TWO

Propositions for Feminist Collective Practice

Alex Martinis Roe (Ed.)

Berlin-based feminist artist Alex Martinis Roe (b. 1982) researched the genealogy of political practice among different feminist movements from the 1970s to the present in Europe and Australia to create To Become Two, a six-element film installation and accompanying exhibition catalog/reader. Using participant observation, oral history interviewing and archival research, Martinis Roe aims to engender new and contemporary ways to practice feminist politics and theory. Twenty women artists, writers, curators and feminist activists also collaborated with Martinis Roe to produce the research creating this in-depth project. Contributors are Alejandra Avilés, Cécile Bally, Vasso Belia, Elena Betros, Federica Bueti, Åsa Elzén, Svenja Engels, Lucia Farinati, Julia Gorostidi, Janneke Koers, Fotini Lazaridou- Hatzigoga, Deborah Ligorio, Sara Paiola, Helena Pérez, Helena Reckitt, Alex Martinis Roe, Juliette Sanchez-Lambert, Valerie Terwei, Veronica Valentini, Lea von Wintzingerode, Evelyn Wan and Lindsay Grace Weber. The Feminist collectives are Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, Psychanalyse et Politique, Paris and the Women’s Studies at Utrecht University, Holland, in connection to the Sydney Women’s Film Group at Sydney University, Australia.

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TOWARDS (IM)MEASURABILITY OF LIFE AND ART

Miya Yoshida (Ed.)

We are surrounded by practices of measurement. Each day we read and hear of astronomical numbers, or unimaginably small figures, in explanation for financial crises and environmentally hazardous catastrophes. Measurements penetrate our lives and the world of being and becoming. This compilation of essays and studies presents findings from the research project “Towards the (Im)measurability of Art and Life” at Leuphana University, Lüneburg (2013). It addresses the ambivalence of measurement and measurability today, and questions our current tendency to force every dimension of life into numbers and predefined categories. Divided into two parts: an introduction and essay on art and measurement by Berlin-based independent curator Miya Yoshida and transcriptions of three dialogues—between three artists and three social scientists on politics, epistemology and the aesthetics of measurement. Contributions by Helmut Draxler, Patricia T. Clough, Matt Mullican, Oxana Timofeeva, Lucy Powell, Sophie Houdart and Chihiro Minato.

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TRACK 17

Nikolaus Hirsch, Wolfgang Lorch, and Andrea Wandel

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THE TRANSDISCIPLINARY STUDIO

Alex Coles

If artists and designers continue to require a studio, shouldn’t the way each of them mobilizes it be a component of any analysis of their practice? By grappling with four distinct examples of transdisciplinary studio models (sculptor Jorge Pardo, industrial designer Konstantin Grcic, installation artist/sculptor Olafur Eliasson and design studio Åbäke), this softcover book delves into the life of these studios by engaging the artists, designers and staff that constitute them. These reflections are accompanied by interviews between the author and studio workers. A further series of interviews with distinguished historians, critics, anthropologists, curators, artists and designers analyzes how their work has informed the transdisciplinary studio model that is now at the forefront of creative practice.

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The Trials of Art

Daniel McClean

When artists and the legal system collide, the result is bound to be interesting, as this unique collection of essays on famous trials of artists from the Renaissance to the present day shows. Edited by art curatorlawyer Daniel McClean, this crisply written anthology looks at such issues as obscenity, religious sensitivity, aesthetic value, appropriation and artistic freedom within the context of celebrated cases. For example, one essay tells the story of the 1927 seizure by the United States Customs Service of Constantin Brancusi’s sculpture Bird in Space; the government contended that the sculpture was not fine art, and was therefore subject to import duty. Another looks at the 1878 case, a scandal at the time, when Whistler sued the art critic Ruskin for libel. More contemporary cases include the Robert Mapplethorpe obscenity case, the “piss Christ” case, and the trial of J.S.G. Boggs, who was tried as a counterfeiter for his hand-made copies of money. Neither lawyers nor art critics are famous for writing clear, entertaining, enlightening texts – but this wonderful book, with essays from 14 leading academics and lawyers, is a notable exception. Who should have the authority to determine what is art: artists, critics and curators, or lawyers, judges and juries? Should artistic expression always be immune from legal and ethical constraints? Should the law always protect artists and art works? A great look behind the scenes at the art world, and its relationship with government and culture.

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TROUBLING RESEARCH

Performing Knowledge in the Arts

Carola Dertnig, Diedrich Diederichsen & Tom Holert (Eds.)

Beginning in 2008/9, a group of Vienna-based artists, art historians and cultural theorists embarked on a journey of experimental research to test their understanding of individual artistic/theoretical practices. Following Foucault’s model of “problematization,” they worked independently and collaboratively to reconsider the interdependence of art and research categories against the politics and economics of the European art educational system. Conceived and designed by artist/curator/author Johannes Porsch, Troubling Research is organized into six sections or “books” aimed at evading standard protocol research reports. Scholarly essays and case studies, interviews, notes, and visual statements are combined to create multilevel narratives of text, typography, and images in which analysis, allegory and poetic association overlap and intersect. With contributions by Carola Dertnig, Diedrich Diederichsen, Tom Holert, Johanna Schaffer, Stefanie Seibold and Axel Stockburger.

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TRUTH IS CONCRETE

A Handbook for Artistic Strategies in Real Politics

Florian Malzacher & Steirischer Herbst (Eds.)

“Truth is Concrete,” a quote Lenin borrowed from Augustine and Hegel, was written in big letters over Bertolt Brecht’s desk during his exile in Denmark from Nazi Germany. It was a reminder during a time of extreme political unrest never to forget the reality around him. The organizers of this book adopted this quote as the working hypothesis for a week-long marathon event/happening, running day and night, that aimed to facilitate and promote direct action, transparency and knowledge exchange among the hundreds of artists, activists, theorists, students and young professionals who attended. The result is a content-packed document with over 99 contributions ranging from Pussy Riot, Rabih Mroué and Slavoj Žižek, describing tactics and strategies for dissent, to a wide range of academics, including Steve Lambert, Alanna Lockward and Jonas Staal, focusing on philosophical and historical modalities of altruistic artistic practices. Viva la revolution!

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