south as a state of mind issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

This is a second volume of the documenta 14 South as a State of Mind which explores issues of "masking identity and silencing dissent, orality and recognition, indigeneity and exile, provenance and repatriation, and colonial and gendered violence". 

Mladen Stilinović (April 10, 1947 – July 18, 2016)

cabinet, issue 57

The new issue of Cabinet magazine, focused on „The North”, includes texts on "a glaciologist's dream of the world, he myth of an unsullied North, unintentional agents of anthropochory, the tarot deck of Austin Osman Spare, the Roman hill built from amphorae shards, Hamburg's sprawling model railway, the "Green Book" and the African American motorist, Mitsou, the cat who was Balthus's first love the history of army green, the "feather book" of a 17th century Milanese gardener, iguanas” and much more.

pechblende

Pechblende is a brand new and radioactive (literally) book from one of our most beloved artists, Susanne Kriemann. Kriemann worked with scientists at the American Museum of Natural History (New York), the National Archives (Washington) and the Museum of Natural History (Berlin) to produce various versions of an “autoradiograph”– a unique type of photograph that is the result of directly exposing light-sensitive paper to the irradiated specimens. 

#makinguse 15

The exhibition Really Useful Knowledge, followed by this book, looked into diverse procedural, non-academic, anti-hierarchical, grass-root educational situations primarily occupied with the transformative potentials of art. "The notion of “really useful knowledge” originated in workers’ awareness ofthe need for self-education in the early 19th century. In the 1820s and 1830s, workers’ organizations in the United Kingdomintroduced this conceptto describe a body of knowledge that encompassedvarious ‘unpractical’disciplines suchaspolitics, economics and philosophy, as opposed to “useful knowledge” proclaimed as suchby the business owners,who some time earlier had increasingly begun to invest in the advancement of their businessesby funding the educationofworkers in‘applicable’ skills and disciplines such as engineering, physics, chemistry or mathematics.Whereas the conceptof “usefulknowledge”operates as a tool of social reproduction and a guardian of the status quo, “really useful knowledge” demands changes by understanding the causes of exploitation and tracing back its origins within ruling ideology. It is a collective, emancipatory, theoretical, emotional, informative and practical quest that starts from acknowledging what we do not yet know”. 

 

 

 

untitled (peace and good), 2016

An annonymus church monument in the village of Bodaczów, Poland, 2016. The inscription: peace good. 

skarbek. reprise at cca warsaw

"What is it that

constantly changes its shape

but retains the same internal order?

What is it

for which there is no place on earth,

and that has no definite borders?

What is it

that affects other things,

and at the same time permits other things to affect it?

What is it

that is always available,

yet still remains unnoticed?

What is it

that is made up of many parts

that at the same time can be parts of something completely different?

What is it

half of which looks very familiar,

and the other half of which resembles nothing you know?

What is it

that changes into something else at the precise moment you learn

of its existence?"

---

Come and find out! Skarbek by Antje Majewski, with libretto by Sebastian Cichocki and music by Katrin Vellrath. April 29, 2016 (Friday), 5.30 – 8.30 p.m., CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw 

continental drift. warsaw

Drift/ walking seminar with Brian Holmes and Claire Pentecost, Warsaw, 24 April, 2016 (in the framework of Continental Drift Then and Now: Update on a Decade-Long Experiment)

Flo Kasearu’s House Museum

Tracking down artist-run museums we recently ended up at Flo Kasearu’s House Museum in Tallinn, Estonia. A gorgeous wooden house is dedicated to the oeuvre of Flo Kasearu, who also lives there, curate the displays and gives tours. The house includes dozens of works by Flo eg. a hole in the attic from where you can look at things outside, neatly appropriated as art. And there is a slide instead of a staircase. And a sauna. 

self-organised (makinguse#15)

Self-Organised, edited by Stine Hebert and Anne Szefer Karlsen, is the third book in the Occasional Table series. "This new anthology of accounts from the frontline includes contributions by artist practitioners as well as their institutional counterparts that provide a fascinating account of the art world as a matrix of positions where the balance of power and productivity constantly shifts. Artists, curators and critics discuss empirical and theoretical approaches from Europe, Africa and South and North America on how self-organisation today oscillates between the self and the group, self-imposed bureaucratisation and flexibility, aestheticisation and activism.” 

Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art

Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art is an incredibly dense, beautifully designed (by Irma Boom) and intelectually deligthful book, dedicated to the curator, writer and dealer Seth Siegelaub (1941–2013), best known for his decisive role in the emergence and establishment of conceptual art in the late 1960s.  Siegelaub was also a gallerist, independent curator, publisher, researcher, archivist, collector, and bibliographer. Often credited as the ‘Father of Conceptual Art’, he was (and remains) a seminal influence on curators, artists, and cultural thinkers, internationally and in Amsterdam, where he settled in the 1990s. The book explores the various facets of and connections in Siegelaub’s work, from his groundbreaking projects with conceptual artists and his research and publications on mass media and communications theories to his interest in handwoven textiles and non-Western fabrics.

FROM MIRIAM ELIA'S "WE GO TO THE GALLERY" P. 3

Farmhands in Factories and Boas in Brasseries

Two voodoo dolls from the Polish countryside, displayed in the minuscule and rather gloomy exhibition Farmhands in Factories and Boas in Brasseries at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. 

#makinguse 14

New World Academy Reader #5: Stateless Democracy provides key texts that offer an overview of both the political and cultural dimensions comprising what has now come to be known to history as the Rojava Revolution. The texts in the reader are as much an introduction to the model of stateless democracy practiced in Rojava, as a potential political paradigm through which to confront the many related crises in politics, economy, and ecology that we face across the world.

The book was edited by Renée In der Maur and Jonas Staal in dialogue with the Kurdish Women’s Movement —an umbrella organization that has been foundational in shaping the political objectives of the Kurdish liberation movement internationally.

atrapanieblas

Atrapanieblas (fog-catchers) is the common name for constructions used to collect fog in the Atacama desert in Chile, one of the driest places on earth. The method was developed and patented in the 1960s by Carlos Espinosa Arancibia, an engineer at the Catholic University of the North in Antofagasta. He then assigned his patent to UNESCO so that it could be copied free of charge. Now atrapanieblas are being tested in over a dozen desert regions around the world, including Israel and Tanzania.