Art

Les sculptures et les films de Judith Hopf sont alimentés par des réflexions sur les relations que les êtres humains entretiennent avec la production et la technologie. Pour Énergies, sa première exposition monographique en France qui eut lieu conjointement à Paris à Bétonsalon et au Plateau, Frac Ile-de-France, l’artiste s’est concentrée sur cet élément invisible dont la quête accompagne notre quotidien et nos activités, produit par la conversion de ressources naturelles en puissance. Ce catalogue réunit des reproductions de dessins inédits, un entretien avec l’artiste et un texte critique de Tom Holert qui fait retour sur vingt années de travail.

Judith Hopf's sculptures and films are fuelled by reflections on the relationship human beings have with production and technology. For Énergies, her first solo exhibition in France, held jointly in Paris, at Bétonsalon and Plateau, Frac Ile-de-France, the artist focused on this invisible element whose quest accompanies our daily lives and activities, produced by converting natural resources into power. This catalog features reproductions of previously unpublished drawings, an interview with the artist and a critical text by Tom Holert, looking back over twenty years of work.

Textes / Texts
- François Aubart, Xavier Franceschi et Émilie Renard, "À propos d’énergie, d’amour et de chansons : conversation avec Judith Hopf"
- Tom Holert, "Changements de rythme : La méthodologie énergétique de Judith Hopf"

- François Aubart, Xavier Franceschi et Émilie Renard, "On Energy, Love, and Songs: Conversation with Judith Hopf"
- Tom Holert, "Changing Pace: Judith Hopf’s Energetic Methodology"

Traduction / Translation
Jean-François Caro
Louise Ledour

Typesetting : Olivier Lebrun

In the first monograph on the feminist conceptual artist collective Claire Fontaine, political theorist and somatic practitioner Anita Chari explores the artist's theoretical and political innovations to illuminate a more haptic, embodied approach to the practice of critical theory.

A User's Manual to Claire Fontaine explores the work of the feminist conceptual artist collective Claire Fontaine through the lens of her theoretical and political innovations, both inside and outside the context of contemporary art. Theorizing the ways in which Claire Fontaine's experimental approach can illuminate a more haptic, embodied practice of critical theory, this book delineates a series of theoretical techniques and procedures at the core of the artist's work, among them defunctionalization, Institutional Critique, human strike, tactile mimesis, desubjectivation, détournement, magic materialism, and feminist materialism.

Political theorist and somatic practitioner Anita Chari illuminates a larger field of practice for those working within the world of critical theory with this "user's manual" that seeks to reinvest theory with use value, drawing on the resources of critical contemporary art to engage with critical theory in ways that can become embodied, sensate, and tactile, and thus inform contemporary political practices.

"Fluently traversing critical theory, political philosophy, and artistic discourse, this is a brilliant, engaging book on the art and writings of Claire Fontaine—'readymade artist' and conceptual provocateur—as well as a vital elucidation of paths toward a transformative mode of living in the present. Writing with and through rather than, as usual, 'on' her subject, Chari provides her readers with a 'how-to' manual to Claire Fontaine's practice, finding in it a model for embodied resistance."—Tom McDonough, author of The Beautiful Language of My Century

Anita Chari is a political theorist and writer based in Portland, Oregon and is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. Her work explores the significance of aesthetics, artistic practices, and embodiment for critical theory and practice.

Claire Fontaine is a feminist, conceptual artist, founded in Paris in 2004.

In 1971, Michael Morris and Vincent Tarsov—founders of the Vancouver-based artist network Image Bank—invited Eric Metcalfe, Gary Lee Nova, Glenn Lewis and Paul Oberst to create their own, unique alphabet. NowForty years later, with the permission of the participating artists and the help of Image Bank, these historic silk-screened alphabets have finally been published together. The Alphabet Book is designed by Marc Hollenstein, who was inspired to reinitiate the alphabet publication project after having a conversation with Glenn Lewis during the opening of Lewis’ retrospective exhibition at Kunstverein back in 2014.

This is the reissue of the long out-of-print publication GAAG: The Guerrilla Art Action Group, 1969–1976: A Selection, first published in 1978.

The book serves as the primary text to the significant work of the activist artist group GAAG (Jon Hendricks, Poppy Johnson, Silvianna, Joanne Stamerra, Virginia Toche and Jean Toche), both as a document of the group’s ideological and logistical concerns, and more broadly as a historical record for fifty-two of the many political art actions they carried out through the late 60s and early 70s.

artwork
black throughout, blue dust jacket
risograph, paperback
saddle stiched
clorine & acid free glassine sleeve

28 pages + dust jacket
152 x 280 mm

first edition, edition of 100
signed

"…this collection of some twenty-eight artworks, being automatic, incongruent — graphite, charcoal, ink — rigid, finite and complete — convey an underestimated and complex sense of play, by which the author — simply Cosi (as if distilling the self in a single word could be conceived as simple) — becomes a diagrammatic example of a brilliant and full-cream adult, so disinterested in the conformity of adulthood that more difficulty is placed within the absurd notion itself" (note from the publisher)

Since 2015, Wen-You Cai has returned on multiple occasions to her parents' hometown of Quanzhou, Fujian, to attend the funerals of her deceased relatives. The ceremonies in the Minnan region unfold like grand dramas in which she is both an observer and a participant. Throughout the ceremony, Wen-You is enveloped in the unknown; everything seems meticulously arranged. Amidst the overwhelming grief of losing loved ones, there exists a feeling of confusion, and taking photographs was one of the ways for her to engage in the funeral process.

For this photo series, Wen-You was initially confronted by her own fear of death, intertwined with her bewilderment and curiosity about the complex funeral rituals and its uniqueness inherent to Minnan culture. To demystify these subjects, Wen-You, joined by te editions, interviewed a funeral director who provides comprehensive “one-stop services,” a monk who hosts Buddhist ceremonies, and a folklorist of Minnan rituals. Minnan Exit can be interpreted as many things–a family album, a curated collection of photographs, an unfinished journey of discovery, as well as the process of  Wen-You's reconciliation with her mortality.

Minnan Exit was designed by an independent graphic design studio, RELATED DEPARTMENT. Through the artist's lens, the design team sought inspiration from funeral objects and rituals, to create a visual concept for the publication's structure and layout with the regional characteristics of Minnan.

Special Interviewees: Chen Huaxian, Master Puyuan, You Gongchu (A-Bue)

This collective book devoted to the work of Sammy Baloji explores how the artist, born in the DRC in 1978, attempts to “restore defeated connections”.

How to think about the memory sifted through colonial violence? What effects does the mining of yesterday and today in Katanga and elsewhere have on the project of a common future? How does form make history beyond erasure?

Sammy Baloji (born 1978 in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo)'s photographs and videos have their roots deep in the ongoing upheavals in Democratic Republic of Congo: the often invisible consequences of the mining of rare minerals used for electronic components; China's gigantic investments all over the African continent; and his country's industrial and cultural heritage. His photographs have taken out many prizes including the Prince Claus Award, the Spiegel Prize and the Rolex Award and have been shown at the Rencontres d'Arles, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt), the Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon/Paris) and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (Washington).

Texts by Sammy Baloji, Lotte Arndt, Julien Bondaz, Baptiste Brun, Jean-François Chevrier, Dominique Malaquais, Fiston Mwanza Mujila.

Designed under the direction of the artist, this monograph is devoted to Danh Vo's in situ installation at the CAPC museum, through which the conceptual artist explores the relationship between individual and collective history, and the notions of power and masculinity.

Published on the occasion of Danh Vo's exhibition at CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, from May 29 to October 28, 2018.

Edited by Danh Vo.
Interview with Danh Vo by María Inés Rodríguez.
Photographs by Nick Ash.

The continuation and culmination of a vast project, articulated between an exhibition and a symposium, imagined by South African curator Ntshepe Tsekere Bopape (Mo Laudi), inviting 17 artists from Africa and its diaspora and a group of researchers to evoke black aesthetics and propose an alternative vision of a world without borders.

In Zulu, imbizo means "gathering" which is called by the elders when there are communal problems so that everyone listens to each other to see how solutions can evolve. The book Globalisto. A philosophy in flux. Acts of an Imbizo is intended as a hybrid between a catalogue of the exhibition held at MAMC+ from 25 June to 16 October 2022 and the publication of the proceedings of the symposium held on 6 and 7 October 2022. The book is therefore in two parts.

The first part reports on Imbizo part 1: the opening, and on the exhibition curated by Ntshepe Tsekere Bopape (Mo Laudi) and Aurélie Voltz, director of MAMC+, which brought together artworks by seventeen artists: Sammy Baloji, Raphaël Barontini, Marie Aimée Fattouche, Sam Gilliam, Porky Hefer, Lubaina Himid, Arthur Jafa, Euridice Zaituna Kala, Samson Kambalu, Moshekwa Langa, Myriam Mihindu, Wilfried Nakeu, Otobong Nkanga, Josèfa Ntjam, Sara Sadik, Dread Scott and Gerard Sekoto. A 32-page glossy booklet follows the exhibition line-up, showing at least one reproduction of each artist's work. The playlist that was available to listen to in the first exhibition room has found its place in the book in the same way as a list of works—a flashcode link refers the person who wishes to read the book while listening to music.

The second part of the book, which is its main body, publishes a written transcription of the contributions of the speakers at Imbizo part 2: the symposium on "Art and (de)colonisation". You will find lectures by academics (Norman Ajari, Amal Alhaag, Christine Eyene, Elvan Zabunyan) as well as more visual essays, conceived as transpositions of performances (Jamika Ajalon, Elsa M'Bala) and a more oral proposition, a transcription of a podcast by the Piment collective that took place live in the MAMC+ auditorium. Three interviews introduce the proceedings. The first, with the curator Mo Laudi, is taken from a special issue of Le 1 Hebdo devoted to the "Globalisto" exhibition. The second is a continuation of the first, conducted by Aurélie Voltz, director of the MAMC+, who asks the curator about the follow-up to his project. The last is also a second publication, originally published in Le 1 Hebdo, in which journalists Iman Amhed, Laurent Greilsamer and Maxence Collin interview philosopher Achille Mbembé.

Contributions by Aurélie Voltz, Ntshepe Tsekere Bopape (Mo Laudi), Iman Ahmed, Maxence Collin, Achille Mbembe, Norman Ajari, Christine Eyene, Elvan Zabunyan, Jamika Ajalon, Amal Alhaag, Elsa M'Bala.

Vogliamo Tutto. Cultural Practices and Labor has its origin in the novel Vogliamo tutto (1971) by Nanni Balestrini, whose protagonist Alfonso Natella became the voice of an entire generation as well as the workers' movements in 1968 Turin. In 2021, thirteen artists were invited to reflect on the change of labor in the contemporary context.

The result is a sum of choral voices and practices, which together outline the peculiar transformative nature of labor and its socio-cultural context over a wide time span: from the impact of the Industrial Revolution to the post-industrial decline and the shifts of the digital era.

The book features two essays by Samuele Piazza and Nicola Ricciardi, curators of the eponymous exhibition at OGR Torino; new writing by the artists Claire Fontaine and Tyler Coburn; and archive texts selected by the artists in the show: Andrea Bowers, Pablo Bronstein, Claire Fontaine, Tyler Coburn, Jeremy Deller, Kevin Jerome Everson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Elisa Giardina Papa, Liz Magic Laser, Adam Linder, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Mike Nelson, and Renate Wiehager for Charlotte Posenenske.

The archive texts include the essays "Automation and the Invisible Service Function" by Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora; "Audio Poverty"Diedrich Diederichsen; "Sabotage" by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn; "Wages Against Housework" by Silvia Federici; "The Wreck of the Sea-Venture" by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker; "Charlotte Posenenske Mimetic Minimalism and Practicability" by Renate Wiehager; an excerpted texts from The Human Animal by Émile Zola; as well as the articles "A Game Designer's Analysis of QAnon" by Reed Berkowitz; "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time" by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy; the "Letter of Protest, Frieze Art Fair, New York" by Andrea Bowers, and the "License Agreement" by the Cultural Capital Cooperative collective; the script from Erie by Kevin Jerome Everson; a conversation between David Green and Rick Smith, UAW Local 1112, and LaToya Ruby Frazier.

Contributions from Samuele Piazza, Nicola Ricciardi, Tyler Coburn, Claire Fontaine.

Reprinted archive texts by Neda Atanasoski & Kalindi Vora, Diedrich Diederichsen, Silvia Federici, Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker, Renate Wiehager, Reed Berkowitz, Tony Schwartz & Catherine McCarthy, Andrea Bowers, the Cultural Capital Cooperative.

The sixth issue of the transversal journal, at the crossroads of art and thought, political philosophy, gender studies and academic knowledge, delves into the various forms of mutation that ripple through our world.

In biology, a mutation describes an alteration of the genetic code that spurs change in a given organism. In linguistics, it generally triggers a modification of the structure of a word, often influenced by phonetic or morphological factors. In any case, mutations—steered by some ever-changing principle—always elude the spatio-theoretical framework which they are rooted in.

Therefore, the mutations composing this issue are different from those that preceded them, and still unlike the ones that will arise in the years to come. Mutabilities explores mutations operating in various fields of research that are precious to Klima—such as ecology, contemporary art, social sciences and politics, technology, or even language. Co-edited with curator Alicia Reymond, and in collaboration with graphic design studio Espace Ness, this new issue originates from an ongoing transformation process. Mirroring an exquisite corpse, Mutabilities unveils the interventions of contributors who position forms of radical mutation at the core of their own practice. The mutations driving them not only constitute subjects for theoretical analysis, but are actually the result, the consequence, and/or the fruit of embodied reflexions. What is a mutating practice?

Edited by Loucia Carlier, Alicia Reymond, Antonine Scali Ringwald.

Contributions by Karen Barad, Léa Bouton, Patrick Chamoiseau, Emma Bigé, Salomé Burstein, David Douard, Rita Elhajj, Kim Farkas, Gözde Filinta, Eva S. Hayward, Tishan Hsu, Bhanu Kapil, Veit Laurent Kurz, Yein Lee, Lionel Manga, P. staff, Diamond Stingily, Sabrina Röthlisberger Belkacem, The School of Mutants, Sarah Shin, Olivier Zeitoun, Joanna Zylinska.

Klima is an annual magazine dedicated to contemporary creation and academic research. It aims to democratize the academic world through a conversation with the world of contemporary artistic creation. Klima gives a voice to creative, singular and conscious individuals, by relating art, activism and academia.

A workbook by Flatform on displacement, conceived and curated by Giuliana Prucca.

The book is published under four different covers and with four different layouts, randomly distributed.

Founded in 2006 and based in Berlin and Milan, Flatform is a video and media arts collective, at the border between experimental cinema and contemporary art, that creates time-based works, film events, and installations, most of which revolve around landscape and biopolitics. Distributed by Light Cone in Paris and by Video Data Bank in Chicago, works by Flatform have competed in major film festivals including Cannes, Rotterdam, Venice, Toronto, and have been shown worldwide in art venues such as Centre Pompidou, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Hirshhorn Museum, MAXXI Museum, Eye Filmmuseum, Wexner Center for the Arts and Garage Center for the Arts.

Co-published by Light Cone and Avarie.

Based on the doctoral thesis of Tanja von Dahlern, this book examines the ways in which literary works have been staged and transformed in visual art, specifically in the field of contemporary film and video installation since the mid-1990s.

Focusing on artworks by Kutlug Ataman, Gerard Byrne, Stan Douglas, and Fiona Tan, it explores the role of literature in relation to cultural memory, as a place where narrative conventions are negotiated, and where cultural space is mediated and constructed. Transformation is discussed as an important element in our culture today, drawing on theories from intertextuality, intermediality, adaptation studies, and artistic appropriation.

Devoted to Cuban-born American artist Ana Mendieta (1948–1985), this monograph appears with an exhibition at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, which brings together around 100 works from over fifteen years of production (1968–1985). The exhibition explores how the artist never ceased to reinvent herself through political and vibrant contemporary work, developing an original, ephemeral sculptural language, at times performative in act and informed by her research into primitive myths and rock art. It reveals her relationship to the visible and invisible, her way of rendering the unspeakable intelligible through traces of the body and its relation to nature.

A career-spanning catalogue featuring excerpts from Raven Chacon’s scores, musical prompts, and drawings interspersed with full-color documentation and descriptive texts of installations, sculptures, and performances. Raven Chacon is a composer and artist creating musical experiences that explore relationships among land, space, and people.

In an experimental practice that cuts across the boundaries of visual art, performance, and music, Chacon breaks open musical traditions and activates spaces of performance where the histories of the lands the United States has encroached upon can be contemplated, questioned, and reimagined. In 2022, Raven Chacon became the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, and was awarded a prestigious MacArthur “genius” fellowship in 2023.

Texts by Raven Chacon, Lou Cornum, Aruna D'Souza, Candice Hopkins, Anthony Huberman, Ingir Bål Nango, Marja Bål Nango, Dylan Robinson & Patrick Nickleson, Eric-Paul Riege, Sigbjørn Skåden, Ánde Somby.

Foreword by Katya García-Antón and Stefanie Hessler.

Vital Signs brings together writings by artist Melissa Gordon, which she has performed live over the past decade in various contexts.

Focusing on the role and behaviour of gesture in her painting practice and that of others, Gordon’s texts move between topics of dropping out, (female) genius, con jobs, how one ‘speaks’ in painting, and notions of ‘suckcess’. Gordons’ writing emerges from a history of feminist organising and editing. Vital Signs shows the development from editor to writer to stand-up performer, and the shuffling and re-combination of the texts with each performative iteration.

The selected pieces – most published here forthe first time – are accompanied by full-page details of Gordon’s body of paintings titled Female Readymades, where inventories of objects, texts, letters, and gestures hang on fences and walls inside larger architectural installations.

Melbourne designer and publisher Tim Coghlan has built his output around the results of both wayward and strategic Google Images searches. Amidst the morass of images that drown the digital present – not to mention the cloud of desensitisation that rises in its wake – some photographs still hold the acute charge and resonance they always did.

Filled with lo-res, amateur, and public domain photographs of burning churches found online, including screen captures from TV news broadcasts, this second volume of Coghlan’s investigative project continues to pose questions of iconography, typology, and the implications of images.

Our Silver Lining is an ongoing collection of everyday observations by Maite Vanhellemont.

"All film stills and photos collected in this publication were unstaged and shot between the spring of 2018 and the winter of 2020 using a iPhone 8. A selection of the film stills was previously shown during a digital pop-up exhibition in Amsterdam's subway network in the context of Museum Nacht 2019.

The text ‘Wat Niemand Ziet’ is also part of Jan Zwaaneveld’s collection of short stories of the same name, which was published in the spring of 2021. The title of this publication refers to a text I came across above a house in Ostend (BE), during a family weekend in the autumn of 2018. Perhaps according to some a cliché, but I experienced this as a piece of poetry, which you sometimes just stumble upon."

A complete documentation on a multimedia exhibition by Berlin-based artist Ixmucané Aguila, giving voice to voiceless descendants of victims of genocide in Namibia.

Genocide in Namibia is an especially sensitive matter—its history has at times been ignored, underestimated, or even denied outright. In the artistic documentary Fraitaxtsēs sores tsîn ge ra≠gâ – Ondjembo yo Null Vier, Ixmucané Aguilar has worked in close collaboration with Nama and OvaHerero people who vividly evoke memories and rituals of mourning caused by human loss and land dispossession under Imperial Germany's violent occupation.
From these personal encounters emerge portraits, visuals and narratives as documental fragments, consisting of living voices which insist on defending memory as an invocation to witness and never to remain passive in the face of social injustice. Rather than a linear collection of data referring to distant places and its distant past, this work engages with stories as chronicles calling to be recognised as pieces of humanity and time.

Alongside Aguilar's portraits, this publication also contains contributions by human rights attorney Wolfgang Kaleck and the curator of the work Tristan Pranyko, along with poetry by Namibian artists Nesindano Namises, Fritz Isak Dirkse and Prince Kamaazegi, and narratives, testimonies, chants and mourning rituals shared by OvaHerero and Nama people in present-day Namiba.

Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at National Art Gallery of Namibia, Windhoek, in 2023

Ixmucané Aguilar (born 1983) is a Guatemalan Berlin-based visual artist/designer who, through multi-layered documentary photography, engages in extensive field research to put out installations and art publications to relay her work in an artistic language.

Louise Bourgeois' flowers series, painted in gouache on paper.

Born in Paris in 1911 and a New Yorker since 1938, Louise Bourgeois created a unique oeuvre—that owes no allegiance to 20th-century "isms"—in the course of a career than has spanned more than 60 years. Psychologically charged and dealing with the realm of human emotion (love, desire, dependency, sexuality, rejection, jealousy, and abandonment), her art is grounded in her own life and experience: "My goal is to re-experience a past emotion … to relive anxiety … anxiety is a passive state, and the object is to be active and take control." Yet Louise Bourgeois did not create an autonomous universe as an artistic hermit. While her art is nourished by personal experience, it also draws from art and art history—a wellspring of inspiration from which she developed her themes, concepts, and approach to media in both two- and three-dimensional works.

After Laughter Comes Tears, in its exhibition and book forms, brings together artists from different generations who are experimenting with the idea of the performative. This publication follows the structure of the exhibition at Mudam Luxembourg, with a prologue, four acts and an epilogue, which each sample excerpts from the range of theory, fiction and poetry that inspired and substantiate the themes of the exhibition. Widening the spectrum of the traditional catalogue, each artist was given a "carte blanche"—an invitation to contribute to the book on their own terms.

This performative book was conceived as a story; a story of the pains, joys, anxieties and doubts of the 2020s. It takes as a starting point, the feelings of stasis and anger that define the present stage of late capitalism, framed by the anxieties of a generation facing a climate crisis, welfare states trampled and failed by neoliberal policies and the rise of xenophobia around the globe, partly fueled by fake news spreading on- and offline. It is an intuitive journey through the voices of thirty-four artists expressing the lurid shapes of the crises that surround us and form a (never exhaustive) part of our contemporary reality.

They are Cem A., Panteha Abareshi, Monira Al Qadiri, Kate Cooper, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Jesse Darling, Stine Deja, Omer Fast, Anna Franceschini, Guan Xiao, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Lukáš Hofmann, Christian Jankowski, Chris Korda, Ndayé Kouagou, Ghislaine Leung, Isaac Lythgoe, Taus Makhacheva, Diego Marcon, Jacopo Miliani, Marie Munk, Chalisée Naamani, Agnieszka Polska, PRICE, Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Mika Rottenberg, Julika Rudelius, Dorian Sari, Sin Wai Kin, Shinuk Suh, Martine Syms, Mungo Thomson, Cajsa von Zeipel, and Artur Żmijewski.

Edited by Clarisse Fahrtmann, Clementine Proby, Joel Valabrega.
Foreword by Bettina Steinbrügge.

Contributions by Kate Cooper, Lukas Hofmann, David McDermott, Markus Pilgram, Agnieszka Polska, Clémentine Proby, Sin Wai Kin, Bettina Steinbrügge, Geraldine Tedder, Joel Valabrega, Lauren Wetmore.

The first volume in a series devoted to Marion von Osten's archives, around the MoneyNations project, transversing between art, theory, and activism.

MoneyNations was an exhibition, a webzine, a radio, a conference, a video archive, a printed publication, an infrastructure, a counterpublic, an ongoing discussion, a transnational network of friends. Initiated by Marion von Osten as curator at the Shedhalle Zurich, the project evolved from an urgency to act against the hegemonic forces of "the West" within the radically changing condition of post-Cold War Europe. MoneyNations addressed—and intervened in—the interrelatedness between racist border policies and media representations, exploitative economic relations, and identity-forming processes. The applied methods of critique and organizing, transversing between art, theory, and activism, are made accessible in this volume through images, correspondences, and other ephemera, revealing their political potential for the present. It is contextualized by a conversation between Sezgin Boynik (Rab-Rab Press), Ferdiansyah Thajib (KUNCI Study Forum & Collective), Eleanor Ivory Weber, Camila Willis (Divided Press) and the editors.

The Material Marion von Osten series periodically publishes selected archival documents from von Osten's projects and contextualizes them with new contributions. Correspondences, drafts, scripts, photographs, videos and printed matter serve as the starting point for the publication series which maps the complexity of Marion von Osten's transversal cultural production in its details and specifics.

The artist, curator, researcher, and educator Marion von Osten (1963-2020) lived in Berlin since the early 1990s. Her always collaborative approach manifested in exhibitions, conferences, installations, as well as films, discussions, texts, teachings, or self-published journals. Her projects were all intertwined and carried by her specific way of working: through artistic research and feminist organizing, transnational and committed to the project of decolonization. Amongst her works are the international exhibition series bauhaus imaginista (2018-2020), Viet Nam Discourse (2016-2018) at Tensta Konsthall, Project Migration (2002-2006) in Cologne, and Sex & Space (1996) at Shedhalle Zurich. As collective infrastructures, her collaborations included Labor k3000, kleines postfordistisches Drama (Minor Postfordist Drama, kpD) and the CPKC Center for Postcolonial Knowledge and Culture.

Edited by Lucie Kolb, Jonas von Lenthe, Max Stocklosa.

Conversation between Sezgin Boynik, Ferdiansyah Thajib, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Camila Willis and the editors.

How to look at polycrisis without freaking out.

Eco ruin and refugeeism, illiberalization and inequality, hot wars and a New Cold War—the polycrisis hydra is always growing another head. But it's also a state of mind, an identity crisis brought on by paralysis and cognitive shock. Was it always like this, but with less media reach? Or is capitalism really burning itself out, just without any redemptive zest? The arts are expert at thematizing the woes that affect them—hello, Biennale and documenta—but maybe polycrisis is an instructive metaphor for what's breaking creativity: the commercial takeover of discourse, the bureaucratization of curating, and the dopamine highs of self-branding.

Maybe we're at a crossroads between recovery and death. But Spike #79 is clear-eyed about the fact that pessimists are never disappointed.

With Henrike Naumann, Shirin Neshat, Roberto Villanueva, Ben Davis, Mire Lee, Precious Okoyomon, Ivan Cheng, Nil Yalter, Anselm Franke, Anna Jermolaewa, Catherine Liu, Oliver Ressler, Morag Keil, Jeppe Ugelvig and many more.

Founded by the artist Rita Vitorelli in 2004, Spike (Spike Art Quarterly) is a quarterly magazine on contemporary art published in English which aims at sustaining a vigorous, independent, and meaningful art criticism. At the heart of each issue are feature essays by leading critics and curators on artists making work that plays a significant role in current debates. Situated between art theory and practice and ranging far beyond its editorial base in Vienna and Berlin, Spike is both rigorously academic and stylishly essayistic. Spike's renowned pool of contributing writers, artists, collectors and gallerists observe and reflect on contemporary art and analyse international developments in contemporary culture, offering its readers both intimacy and immediacy through an unusually open editorial approach that is not afraid of controversy and provocation.

Featuring "Pebbles, Chrome, Silk, Cedar and Anecdotes", a short story by Lucy McKenzie.

Photographs: Camille Vivier
Publication layout: Alice Zani