e-flux podcast

10 years of e-flux journal

Bodies exceed humanity. They remind us that we are part of something vaster—and smaller—more complex, more connected than our mere existence as an atomized species. Our bodies, and bodies in general, are comprised of heterogeneity and multitudes. All bodies are wet collective bodies defined by how they link to other bodies, places, environments, technologies. Think of breathing, clogging, decomposing, discharging, flushing, lubricating, melting, menstruating, transfusing. Bodies exist as trans- and extra-territorial beings. They live in hybridity. This porous condition produces a planetary wet-togetherness, a “commoning” force that constitutes all bodies as collective hydro-subjects. Wet-Togetherness is a collaboration between e-flux and the 13th Shanghai Biennale,&nbsp;Bodies of Water, curated by Andrés Jaque, Marina Otero Verzier, Lucia Pietroiusti, Filipa Ramos, and YOU Mi, and organized and promoted by the Power Station of Art. It consists of nine sound pieces in which 21 artists, activists, and researchers enact aqueousness through sound. The series has been edited by José Luis Espejo and Rubén Coll, with sound design by Tomoko Sauvage, coordination by Roberto González García, and locutions by Yang Yang. Episode 6. Transfusing: With three sound pieces by scholar Iván L. Munuera and artists P. Staff and Himali Singh Soin Bodies are permeable. They exist in continuous fluid exchange with other bodies. Yet fluids circulate differently than the bodies to which they once belonged. They pass from one body to another body, merging stories, fates, futures. They fuse health, life, or their opposite. Fluids replace components; they add something that is lacking or is desired. Fluids are given, passed onto, injected, poured, infiltrated in a sometimes unavowed hydro commons. Iván L. Munuera talks about blood transfusion. Blood transfusion carries a notion of “body” far from the definition of a discrete and autonomous being. It states an environmental recomposition that pushes for interdependent, interconnected, and not zipped-up embodiments. In their work, P. Staff interrogates the often uncomfortable interdependency and extraction of bio-commodities, both human and other, between body and institution, liquid, and solid. The material dimension of collective life becomes the site where structural violence, registers of harm, and the corrosive effects of acid, blood, and hormones can be explored and enacted. Himali Singh Soin explores the elements of the earth, their reverberations in the body and the inter-scalar exchanges between them. Here she tells the story of a search for a lost bla, a subtle life force that runs through the world-body that has lost itself amid the crisis of the present moment.

Subscribe

Wet-Togetherness [6]—Transfusing: Iván L. Munuera, P. Staff & Himali Singh Soin by Shanghai Biennale

Hallie Ayres talks with Shimrit Lee about her forthcoming book, Decolonize Museums.&nbsp;&nbsp;  is a writer, educator, and curator based in Philadelphia. An interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of visual culture, performance, and critical security studies, Shimrit’s research interests relate to the cultural production of security narratives in Israel and the US. She holds a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from NYU, and currently teaches high school history as well as community-based adult education at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Her book, Decolonize Museums, will be published as part of the series “” by Warscapes and O/R Books in 2021.

Shimrit Lee on Decolonize Museums

Sanna Almajedi talks to Jad and Tarek Atoui about their experimental music duo, Through Rust and Dusk. The conversation is followed by an excerpt of their performance at e-flux on September 26, 2022 that incorporated improvisation, custom made instruments, field recordings, and electronic sounds.&nbsp; Read more about Tarek Atoui‘s The Whisperers (October 1–December 10, 2022) at Flag Art Foundation . &nbsp; Jad Atoui is a Beirut-based sound artist and improviser. He composes and performs electronicand electro-acoustic music and has worked with musicians like John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros, Laurie Anderson, Chuck Bettis, and Anthony Sahyoun. During his formative years in New York, Atoui found interest in the New York avant-garde scene. He began working closely with NYC downtown musicians and learning improvised music techniques, while also working at the Stone and the Guggenheim Museum. In 2015, Atoui spearheaded the “Biosonics” project in collaboration with scientist Ivan Marazzi where they used bio-sonification of behaviors as compositional tools. The project was later published in John Zorn’s Arcana Book Vol. XVIII and premiered at National Sawdust as part of The Stone’s commissioning series. Atoui has given and co-directed workshops at Marfa Sounding, Ashkal Alwan, and Beirut Synth Center, and has been a resident at The Stone, The National Sawdust, Beirut Art Center, Arab Image Foundation, and Sharjah Art Foundation. Tarek Atoui is an artist and composer born in Beirut. His work stems from performance and looks into how sound can be perceived with sensory organs other than the ear, how sound acts as a catalyst for human interaction, and how it relates to social, historical, and spatial parameters. The point of departure for his works is usually extensive anthropological, ethnological, musicological, or technical research, which results in the realization of instruments, listening rooms, performances, or workshops. Atoui has presented his work internationally at the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates (2009 and 2013); dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel, Germany (2012); the 8th Berlin Biennial (2014); Tate Modern, London (2016); CCA NTU, Singapore (2017); Garage Moscow (2018); the 58th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia (2019); the Okayama Art Summit 2019; the Sharjah Art Foundation (2020); The Fridericianum (2020); And Pinault Collection (2021).  He was appointed co-artistic director of STEIM studios in 2007, and of the Bergen Assembly, a triennial for contemporary art in Norway in 2016. He is the recipient of the Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize 2020. Tarek Atoui currently lives and works in Paris, France. e-flux music is curated by Sanna Almajedi.&nbsp;

Jad and Tarek Atoui: Through Rust and Dusk

Lukas Brasiskis, associate curator of , talks to Erika Balsom about the book and exhibition co-curated with Hila Peleg, .&nbsp; The episode was recorded at e-flux Screening Room before “No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image,” a talk by Erika Balsom preceded by a screening of Han Ok-hee’s Untitled 77A (1977, 6 minutes) and Grupo Chaski’s Miss Universo en el Perú (1982, 32 minutes). Erika Balsom is Reader in Film Studies at King’s College London. She is the author of four books, including After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation (Columbia University Press, 2017) and TEN SKIES (Fireflies Press, 2021, shortlisted for the Kraszna Krausz prize). Her criticism appears regularly in venues such as Artforum, Cinema Scope, , and 4Columns. With Hila Peleg, she is the co-curator of the exhibition No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image (HKW Berlin, 2022) and co-editor of the books Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image (2022) and Documentary Across Disciplines (2016), both published by MIT Press. In 2018, she was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize and the Katherine Singer Kovacs essay award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Erika Balsom on Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image

Andreas Petrossiants talks to author Jacopo Galimberti about his book, , published in 2022. Jacopo Galimberti is an art historian and Assistant Professor at IUAV (Venice). He is the author of Individuals Against Individualism: Art Collectives in Western Europe (1956-1969) (Liverpool) and Images of Class: Operaismo, Autonomia and the Visual Arts (1962-1988) (Verso), which historicizes those political currents and movements alongside visual and literary culture that was either in dialogue or in debate with the figures he centers—as well as the revolutionary aesthetic/cultural theory that they produced through workers’ inquiries and research on forms of postwar labor, and later participation in extraparliamentary militant social and urban movements. In addition to providing an art and architecture historical perspective on these movements, the book acts as a very helpful entry-point to operaist theory, which Classe Operaia called an “anti-dialectical Marxism,” including the work of Mario Tronti, Rita di Leo, Mandredo Tarfuri, Silvia Federic, and the various groups and grassroots movements that would constitute autonomia. Referenced in this episode: Rossella Biscotti,&nbsp; at e-flux (2012)

Jacopo Galimberti: Images of Class

An excerpt from Raven Chacon’s performance&nbsp;Solos, followed by a conversation with Xenia Benivolski, recorded live at e-flux on April 27.&nbsp; Solos, is a series of short, improvised works performed in quick succession. Using a variety of acoustic and electronic instruments, Chacon’s experimental compositions range from sparse, minimalistic soundscapes to complex, multi-layered works that incorporate voices, noises, and found sounds. Raven Chacon is a Pulitzer Prize–winning composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. Since 2004, he has mentored more than three hundred Native high school composers in writing new string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project (NACAP). As a solo artist, collaborator, and a member of Postcommodity from 2009 to 2018, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Ar, The Renaissance Society, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, REDCAT, Vancouver Art Gallery, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, SITE Santa Fe, Ende Tymes Festival, New York, the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, Carnegie International, and Carnegie Museum of Art. Chacon is the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship, a Creative Capital Award, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artist Fellowship, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, and the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage’s Fellowship-in-Residence.  Xenia Benivolski&nbsp;writes and lectures about visual art, sound, and music. She is the curator of the project&nbsp;&nbsp;which is an online e-flux exhibition. &nbsp;

Raven Chacon: Solos

Recorded in February 2023, Keli Maksud talks to Esteban Jefferson about his exhibition, MAY 25th, 2020, at 303 Gallery. A second iteration of the show will open at Goldsmiths CCA in October 2023. Esteban Jefferson's practice centers around issues of race, identity and the legacies of colonialism. Using photography, drawing, painting, and sound installation as forms of documentation, Jefferson paints the focal points of his compositions in great detail, creating a stark contrast between the subject or object in focus and the surrounding environment. The paintings are left intentionally unfinished, creating a raw style emblematic of his investigative process.&nbsp; Well known for his series, “Petit Palais”, first featured at White Columns, New York, in 2019, Jefferson’s latest works consider the related symbolism of flags and toppling of equestrian monuments in New York, through the lens of racial and colonial legacies. Esteban Jefferson was born in New York City in 1989, and attended Columbia University. Recent group exhibitions include Art on the Grid, Public Art Fund, New York (2020); ESTAMOS BIEN: La Trienal, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2021) and Open Call, The Shed, New York (2021). Jefferson lives and works in New York City. &nbsp;

Esteban Jefferson: MAY 25th, 2020

Tamara Khasanova and Hallie Ayres talk to artist Saodat Ismailova following&nbsp;, a screening of three films at e-flux. Stay tuned after the conversation for an excerpt from a soundscape composed by  for Ismailova’s film, The Haunted. Films discussed in this episode: The Haunted (2017, 23 minutes) takes the form of an open letter to the Turan tiger. A majestic symbol of the Central Asian landscape, this animal has been extinct for several decades but lives on as a sacred symbol in the collective imagination of the local population. In her captivating film essay, Ismailova pays homage to the tiger as she shows how firmly bound it is to the region’s history. Stains of Oxus (2016, 24 minutes) follows a transformation of the landscape of the Amu Darya riverbanks and the people that inhabit them, beginning from the high plateau in Tajikistan to the lowland deserts in Uzbekistan, where the river finds its end. Chillpiq (2018, 17 minutes) begins with a scene of two buses emerging on the horizon as they drive toward Chillpiq. A group of forty girls climb the ruins that stand atop a mount in the middle of the steppe. One by one, they tie pieces of cloth to a flagpole that crowns the archeological site, and worship it as a symbol of life. The girls circle the shrine while the setting sun changes the light to an orange glow, blurring their silhouettes as they disappear into the site. Two Horizons (2022, 24 mins) was exhibited as part of the ’s Partial Eclipse section, and hints at infinite strategies through which humans access occluded forms of matter and energy. Two Horizons combines a prophecy carried down in the ancient Turkic oral histories of Qorqut with the more recent history of a space launch facility. The tomb of Qorqut—the storyteller and seer who is the central hero of the epic—lies in the south of Kazakhstan, near the Baikonur Cosmodrome. In the local culture the belief persists that a person will one day come to defeat gravity and achieve eternal life.&nbsp; &nbsp; Saodat Ismailova is a filmmaker and artist who came of age in the post-Soviet era in Central Asia. She graduated from Tashkent State Art Institute in Uzbekistan and Le Fresnoy, National Studio of Contemporary Arts in France. Drawing on the cultural identities and vernacular histories of Central Asia, Saodat Ismailova’s films meditate on memory, spirituality, immortality, and extinction. Frequently based around folk stories in which women are the lead protagonists, and exploring systems of knowledge suppressed by globalized modernity, these consciousness expanding works hover between visible and invisible worlds.&nbsp; Tamara Khasanova is a curator, researcher, and writer living in Brooklyn, New York. She currently serves as an Archives Assistant at e-flux, and curated the To Share a Dream With a River screening program. Hallie Ayres was on the curatorial team for Cosmos Cinema, the 14th Shanghai Biennale. She is Associate Director of e-flux.

Saodat Ismailova: To Share a Dream With a River

A conversation preceding the ’s  at e-flux curated by Natacha Nsabimana, featuring two works by Rwandan filmmaker Amelia Umuhire. The African Film Institute is convened by Christian Nyampeta and hosted by e-flux Screening Room. Amelia Umuhire (b. 1991, Kigali, Rwanda) is a filmmaker and artist living in Kigali and Berlin. In 2015, she wrote and directed the award-winning web-series Polyglot, in which she follows the lives of young, deracinated London- and Berlin-based Rwandese artists. Her short film Mugabo was awarded Best Experimental Film at the Blackstar Film Festival, and screened at MOCA Los Angeles and the Berlin Biennale among many other places. In 2018, Umuhire produced the Prix Europa-nominated radio feature Vaterland for the German radio station Deutschlandfunk Kultur. She was a Villa Romana Fellow in 2020, and is currently working on her first feature film. Natacha Nsabimana teaches in the anthropology department at the university of Chicago. Her research and teaching interests include postcolonial critique, musical movements, and the cultural and political worlds of African peoples on the continent and in the diaspora. The  aims to create a home and a place of intimacy with African cinema in New York, through developing gradually and organically a viewing program animated by fellowships; a growing library; an active writers’ room; and an expanding catalog of recorded dialogs. The African Film Institute draws from the visual cultures that view cinema as an evening school: a popular information system in the service of education, aesthetic experience, and public dissemination—employing a methodology concerning the use of cinema’s collective production, and investing in viewing methods informed by different uses of time, visual and textual histories, and social struggles and hopes in mutuality between their own locality and the world at large.&nbsp;

African Film Institute: Amelia Umuhire, Natacha Nsabimana, and Christian Nyampeta

Andreas Petrossiants talks to author  Ciarán Finlayson about his book, , published by Floating Opera Press in 2023. &nbsp;  In Perpetual Slavery, Ciarán Finlayson investigates the relationship of art to freedom in the work of Cameron Rowland and Ralph Lemon, who both utilize imagery of labor haunted and structured by the historical experience of slavery. Finlayson suggests that these two artists’ work overcomes the dichotomy between the recording of history and its interpretation by making both the object of artistic experience, thereby providing a space to grasp the continuing effects of slavery.&nbsp;    &nbsp;  Ciarán Finlayson is an editor from Houston, Texas. He is Senior Editor at Triple Canopy. Finlayson is on the core faculty of the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in New York, and has taught aesthetics and social theory at Columbia University, New York, and the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, and at socialist night schools hosted by the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America.

Ciarán Finlayson on Perpetual Slavery

Hallie Ayres talks to artist Heidi Lau. This episode is part of a series produced in conjunction with the 14th Shanghai Biennale at the Power Station of Art (November 2023–March 2024), curated by Anton Vidokle, Zairong Xiang, Hallie Ayres, Lukas Brasiskis, and Ben Eastham.&nbsp; ’s luminous ceramics evoke architectural ruins, funerary vessels, and mythological creatures. Channeling the artist’s personal history, the syncretic cultures of her native Macau, and the diasporic experience, Lau transforms Taoist ritual tokens of mourning and remembrance into what Kang Kang describes as “oblique monuments for an impossible ancestry.” &nbsp; Intro sound: excerpt from Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto), COSMOS (Soundtrack for 14th Shanghai Biennale), 2023. 14 tracks, overall 117:30 minutes.

Cosmos Cinema conversation: Heidi Lau

Ben Eastham talks to artist Lucile Desamory. This episode is part of a series produced in conjunction with the 14th Shanghai Biennale at the Power Station of Art (November 2023–March 2024), curated by Anton Vidokle, Zairong Xiang, Hallie Ayres, Lukas Brasiskis, and Ben Eastham.   works at the frontiers of perception and cognition, with a special interest in what the Berlin-based artist refers to as the “too-much, the falsified, and spurned narratives.” The breadth of her pursuit is reflected in the diversity of her approach, which uses film, painting, embroidery, photography, and her voice. Often working in collaboration, her oeuvre extends to theatrical works, feature-length films, and a television show currently in production.

Cosmos Cinema conversation: Lucile Desamory

McKenzie Wark on her essay, "My Collectible Ass," published in the 85th issue of e-flux journal, October 2017.&nbsp;In conversation with journal editor Stephen Squibb. 

Read the essay: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/85/156418/my-collectible-ass/
Subscribe to the podcast via itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mckenzie-wark-on-fate-art-collecting-in-digital-age/id1332021431?i=1000399156007&mt=2

McKenzie Wark on the fate of art collecting in the digital age

Vivian Ziherl&nbsp;discusses her curatorial platform Frontier Imaginaries&nbsp;on the occasion of&nbsp;TOXIC ASSETS: Frontier Imaginaries Ed.No3&nbsp;at e-flux, Columbia University, and UnionDocs in October 2017. In conversation with journal editor Brian Kuan Wood. 

Watch day one of TOXIC ASSETS on e-flux film & video: http://www.e-flux.com/video/167822/toxic-assets-nbsp-frontier-imaginaries-ed-no3-at-e-flux-and-columbia-university-day-1/
"The Fourfold Articulation" in e-flux journal #81, April 2017: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/81/126968/the-fourfold-articulation/
Subscribe via itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/vivian-ziherl-on-frontier-imaginaries-toxic-assets/id1332021431?i=1000399960426&mt=2

Vivian Ziherl on Frontier Imaginaries, Toxic Assets, and The Fourfold Articulation

Elizabeth A. Povinelli discusses four axioms of critical theory in response to her presentation, "Toxic Assets the the Extimacy of Existence," from Frontier Imaginaries Ed.No3 at e-flux. In conversation with journal editor Stephen Squibb. 

Read Elizabeth A. Povinelli in e-flux journal (http://www.e-flux.com/journal/): 

"Geontologies: The Concept and Its Territories" from issue 81, April 2017
"Geontologies: The Figures and the Tactics" from issue 78, December 2016

Elizabeth A. Povinelli on the four axioms of critical theory

e-flux founder, journal editor, and artist Anton Vidokle discusses cosmism with Kaye Cain-Nielsen, editor-in-chief of e-flux journal. You can read more on cosmism in the 88th issue of e-flux journal&nbsp;(February 2018).&nbsp;Featuring texts by Robert Bird, Maria Chehonadskih, Keti Chukhrov, Boris Groys, Trevor Paglen, Alexei Penzin, Marina Simakova, Arseny Zhilyaev, and a Timeline of Russian Cosmism compiled by Anastasia Gacheva, Arseny Zhilyaev, and Anton Vidokle.&nbsp;

Immortality for all: Anton Vidokle on cosmism

Zach Blas in conversation with Laurel Ptak, Art in General's Executive Director &amp; Curator, on the occasion of Blas's exhibition&nbsp;Contra-Internet&nbsp;at Art in General and his lecture-performance&nbsp;Metric Mysticism&nbsp;at e-flux. 

Zach Blas&nbsp;is an artist and writer whose practice confronts technologies of capture, security, and control. Currently, he is a Lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. His recent works respond to biometric governmentality and network hegemony. 

Read more about the exhibition, on view through April 21, 2018, at http://www.artingeneral.org/exhibitions/650

Read Zach Blas' essay in e-flux journal #74 (June 2016): "Contra-Internet" http://www.e-flux.com/journal/74/59816/contra-internet/

Contra-Internet with Zach Blas and Laurel Ptak

Dena Yago discusses her essay "Content Industrial Complex,"&nbsp;published in e-flux journal issue 89 (March 2018), with editor-in-chief Kaye Cain-Nielsen.  "What is an artist to do? With an understanding of how our content, identities, and influence are valuable to and instrumentalized by brands and marketers, we can find space for resistance and refusal, or we can actively engage with existing models in an effort to ameliorate them."  Dena Yago is an artist who was born in 1988. She has had numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, including at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and at Bodega in New York.

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/89/181611/content-industrial-complex/

Dena Yago on the "Content Industrial Complex"

Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe) on the occasion of the launch of their book  The Empire Remains Shop&nbsp;at e-flux. In conversation with e-flux journal Art Director and artist Mariana Silva. 

"Empire shops" were first developed in London in the 1920s to teach the British to consume foodstuffs from the colonies and overseas territories. Although none of the stores ever opened, they were intended to make previously unfamiliar produce and products—sultanas from Australia, oranges from Palestine, cloves from Zanzibar, and rum from Jamaica—available in the British Isles. The Empire Remains Shop speculates on the possibility and implications of selling the remains of the British Empire in London today. 

Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe) is a duo of spatial practitioners based out of London. It was born to explore the systems that organize the WORLD through FOOD. Using installation, performance, mapping, and video, their research-based practice explores the overlapping boundaries between visual arts, architecture, and geopolitics. Cooking Sections was part of the exhibition at the U.S. Pavilion, 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. Their work has also been exhibited at Performa17; 13th Sharjah Biennial; Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin; Storefront for Art &amp; Architecture New York; dOCUMENTA(13); CA2M, Madrid; The New Institute, Rotterdam; UTS, Sydney; HKW Berlin; Akademie der Künste, Berlin; among others, and have been residents in The Politics of Food at Delfina Foundation, London, and Headlands Center for the Arts. The duo were part of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale and 2016 Brussels ParckDesign. Their work has been featured in a number of international publications (Lars Müller, Sternberg Press, Volume, and Frieze Magazine). The Empire Remains Shop is published by Columbia Books on Architecture and the City–Columbia University Press. They currently lead a studio unit at the RCA, London.

Subscribe to the podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/e-flux-podcast/id1332021431?mt=2
Cooking Sections: http://www.cooking-sections.com/
Book launch at e-flux: http://www.e-flux.com/program/191173/book-launch-cooking-sections-nbsp-the-empire-remains-shop-with-cooking-sections-coco-fusco-and-natasha-ginwala/

Cooking Sections on how food infrastructures shape the world

Recorded at the New York book launch of Jalal Toufic's "What Was I Thinking?", February 28, 2018 at e-flux. Published by e-flux journal and Sternberg Press (2017). Lecture by the author and conversation with Walid Raad.

https://www.e-flux.com/books/158615/what-was-i-thinking/

Jalal Toufic at e-flux, "What Was I Thinking?"

e-flux journal editors Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle, and Kaye Cain-Nielsen discuss 10 years of e-flux journal. 

Excerpt from the editorial of&nbsp;e-flux journal issue #95—WONDERFLUX:  

In November 2008, the editorial for issue #00 said:  Historically, more than any single institution, art publications have been primary sites for discourse surrounding the artistic field. And yet most recently, the discourse has seemingly moved elsewhere—away from the formal vocabulary used to explain art production, away from traditional art capitals, and away from the printed page. At times, new discursive practices even replace traditional forms of art production. Given the current climate of disciplinary reconfiguration and geographic dispersal, it has become apparent that the urgent task has now become to engage the new intellectual territories in a way that can revitalize the critical vocabulary of contemporary art. We see a fresh approach to the function of an art journal to be perhaps the most productive way of doing this.  With this first, inaugural issue of&nbsp;e-flux journal, we begin something of an experiment in developing both a discursive space and a site for actual art production, in which writers, artists, and thinkers are invited to write on topics of their choosing.  Reading this again ten years on makes us feel grateful for all the brilliant contributors and readers who have shaped the journal over the years.&nbsp;e-flux journal&nbsp;#95 marks a full decade into this strange experiment in contemporary art publishing.  For our tenth birthday, a small group of longtime contributors have written short texts, which artists have illustrated and set to graphic format. Since 2008, the authors included here have continued to shape varied concerns and urgencies into certain consistencies and overarching emergent issues. 

We hope you’ll enjoy issue #95:&nbsp;WONDERFLUX.  

Stay tuned for events we’re organizing in 2019 to mark the start of the next decade of&nbsp;e-flux journal.

10 years of e-flux journal (part 1/2)

e-flux journal editors Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle, and Kaye Cain-Nielsen discuss 10 years of e-flux journal.

Excerpt from the editorial of e-flux journal issue #95—WONDERFLUX:

In November 2008, the editorial for issue #00 said:

Historically, more than any single institution, art publications have been primary sites for discourse surrounding the artistic field. And yet most recently, the discourse has seemingly moved elsewhere—away from the formal vocabulary used to explain art production, away from traditional art capitals, and away from the printed page. At times, new discursive practices even replace traditional forms of art production. Given the current climate of disciplinary reconfiguration and geographic dispersal, it has become apparent that the urgent task has now become to engage the new intellectual territories in a way that can revitalize the critical vocabulary of contemporary art. We see a fresh approach to the function of an art journal to be perhaps the most productive way of doing this.

With this first, inaugural issue of e-flux journal, we begin something of an experiment in developing both a discursive space and a site for actual art production, in which writers, artists, and thinkers are invited to write on topics of their choosing.

Reading this again ten years on makes us feel grateful for all the brilliant contributors and readers who have shaped the journal over the years. e-flux journal #95 marks a full decade into this strange experiment in contemporary art publishing.

For our tenth birthday, a small group of longtime contributors have written short texts, which artists have illustrated and set to graphic format. Since 2008, the authors included here have continued to shape varied concerns and urgencies into certain consistencies and overarching emergent issues.

We hope you’ll enjoy issue #95: WONDERFLUX.

Stay tuned for events we’re organizing in 2019 to mark the start of the next decade of e-flux journal.

10 years of e-flux journal (part 2/2)

Artist Agnieszka Kurant and researcher Tobias Rees in conversation with e-flux journal Contributing Editor Elvia Wilk.

 

Agnieszka Kurant explores how complex social, economic and ecological systems can operate in ways that confuse distinctions between fiction and reality or nature and culture. Probing collective intelligence, surveillance capitalism, AI and the evolution of culture, labor and creativity, she investigates automation, crowdsourcing and data exploitation in the context of art production. Her works often behave like living organisms, self-organized complex systems or bachelor machines. Her past projects include a commission for the façade of the Guggenheim Museum (2015) and a solo exhibition at the Sculpture Center, New York (2013). In 2010 she co-represented Poland at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Her work was featured in exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo, Guggenheim Bilbao, Tate Modern, Witte de With, Moderna Museet, MUMOK, Bonner Kunstverein, The Kitchen, Frieze Projects and Performa Biennial. She is an artist in residence at MIT CAST and a fellow of the Smithsonian Institute and the Berggruen Institute.

Tobias Rees is the Reid Hoffman Professor of Humanities at the New School for Social Research, Director at the Los Angeles-based Berggruen Institute, and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. 
 
Rees finds himself intrigued by situations that are not reducible to the already thought and known—by events, small ones or large ones, that set the taken for granted in motion and thereby provoke unanticipated openings for which no one has words yet. In his writings he seeks to capture something of the at times wild, at other times tender, almost fragile openness that rules as long as the new/different has not yet gained any stable contours—when it is pure movement.
 
Over the last decade his research has explored possibilities of practicing the human sciences after the figure of the human on which the human sciences (and art) has been contingent failed us: The human—the object of the human sciences is a figure not known before the late eighteenth century. 
 
He is the author of Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary (2008), Plastic Reason (2016), and most recently of After Ethnos (2018).

Collective Intelligence: Agnieszka Kurant, Tobias Rees, and Elvia Wilk (part 1/2)

Sanna Almajedi speaks with Keith Fullerton Whitman following his Satellite music series performance at&nbsp;Bar Laika.&nbsp; 

A composer and performer living in Brooklyn, Keith Fullerton Whitman is currently in the process of realizing geographically and thematically relevant live electronic music under the “Redactions” banner, as well as performing contemporary revisions of his classic “Generators” and “Playthroughs” frameworks. He recently performed at the GRM's Immersion festival in Paris, Documenta 14 in Athens, The Labyrinth in Niigata, MaerzMusik's The Long Now in Berlin, Semibreve in Braga, Send + Receive in Winnipeg, The Geometry of Now in Moscow, and the Don Buchla Memorial Concerts in San Francisco. 

Satellite is a monthly experimental music series organized by Sanna Almajedi at Bar Laika by e-flux.

Satellite music series: Keith Fullerton Whitman

e-flux journal editor Brian Kuan Wood speaks to Kader Attia, artist and founder of&nbsp;La Colonie,&nbsp;a space in Paris for sharing ideas and discussion. Focussing on decolonialisation not only of people but also of knowledge, attitudes and practices, it aspires to de-compartmentalise knowledge by a trans-cultural, trans-disciplinary and trans-generational approach. Driven by the urgency of social and cultural reparations, it aims to reunite which has been shattered, or drift apart. Kader Attia&nbsp;(b. 1970, France), grew up in Paris and in Algeria. Preceding his studies at the École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and at Escola Massana, Centre d’Art i Disseny in Barcelona, he spent several years in Congo and in South America. The experience with these different cultures, the histories of which over centuries have been characterised by rich trading traditions, colonialism and multi-ethnic societies, has fostered Kader Attia’s intercultural and interdisciplinary approach of research. For many years, he has been exploring the perspective that societies have on their history, especially as regards experiences of deprivation and suppression, violence and loss, and how this affects the evolving of nations and individuals—each of them being connected to collective memory. His socio-cultural research has led Kader Attia to the notion of&nbsp;Repair, a concept he has been developing philosophically in his writings and symbolically in his oeuvre as a visual artist. With the principle of&nbsp;Repair&nbsp;being a constant in nature—thus also in humanity—, any system, social institution or cultural tradition can be considered as an infinite process of&nbsp;Repair, which is closely linked to loss and wounds, to recuperation and re-appropriation.&nbsp;Repair&nbsp;reaches far beyond the subject and connects the individual to gender, philosophy, science, and architecture, and also involves it in evolutionary processes in nature, culture, myth and history. Attia's solo exhibition&nbsp;The Museum of Emotion&nbsp;at&nbsp;The Hayward Gallery, London recently closed. Upcoming 2019 exhibitions include a solo show opening in September at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and group shows at Rubin Museum of Art, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and The Phillips Collection.

Kader Attia on La Colonie and Algeria

Artist Karl Holmqvist reads “ANOTHER WAR IS POSSIBLE” and “NUMBERS,” and speaks with artist and e-flux founder Anton Vidokle. Karl Holmqvist is known for using a wide range of formats—poetry readings, installation, and sculpture–to bring out the primal qualities of language. He is one of a current generation of artists working with language and text as sculptural or performative material. Holmqvist says his work is meant to spark the creative process in the viewer, seeing his art and poetry as a translation of the complexities of contemporary life. He blends poetry with pop music and his texts, composed of anecdotes as famous as they are diverse, explore the themes of communication and language. Together, the works unpack the many operations of language, how it can occupy space and provoke “invisible images” within memory and imagination. In February 2019, e-flux’s Bar Laika presented a new work by Karl Holmqvist: #FLU$$CH (29 minutes, 2017), with an introduction by and Q&amp;A with Pati Hertling. You can read “GORILLAZ GRRLZ,”&nbsp;Holmqvist’s contribution to e-flux journal’s SUPERCOMMUNITY project at the 56th Venice Biennale, here.

ANOTHER WAR IS POSSIBLE: Karl Holmqvist

e-flux journal editorial assistant Andreas Petrossiants speaks to Franco “Bifo” Berardi following his recent texts “(Sensitive) Consciousness and Time: Against the Transhumanist Utopia” in issue 98, and “Game Over” in issue 100. Franco Berardi, aka “Bifo,” founder of the famous Radio Alice in Bologna and an important figure in the Italian Autonomia movement, is a writer, media theorist, and social activist. His most recent books are Breathing: Chaos and Poetry (Semiotexte, 2018) and The Second Coming (Polity, 2019).

Franco “Bifo” Berardi on the future possibility of living well

Amidst a climate of uncertainty and social distancing due to COVID-19, writer and e-flux journal contributing editor Elvia Wilk and artist Anicka Yi discuss various changing global ecologies, viral and otherwise. Their original in-person conversation was planned on the occasion of Tate Modern’s selection of Yi for the annual Hyundai / Turbine Hall commission.&nbsp; 

A symbiotic organism in its own right, Anicka Yi's work fuses multi-sensory experience with synthetic and evolutionary biology to form lush bio-fictional landscapes. Utilizing a “biopolitics of the senses,” Yi challenges traditional approaches to the human sensorium, emphasizing olfaction as well as microbial and embodied intelligence. Through her research and “techno-sensual” artistic exploration, Yi is opening new discourse in the realms of cognition, artificial intelligence and machine learning, introducing concepts of the sensorial ecology of intelligence, the machine microbiome, machine ecosystems, and “biologized” machines. Maintaining a practice focused on co-subjectivity, Yi’s projects include collaborations with engineers, robots, synthetic and microbiologists, computer scientists, perfumers, ant and bacterial colonies, algae, tempura-fried flowers, and snails.&nbsp; 

Anicka Yi lives and works in New York City. Her recent solo exhibitions include Gladstone Gallery, Brussels; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Fridericianum, Kassel; Kunsthalle Basel; List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Kitchen, New York; and The Cleveland Museum of Art. Yi’s work was also featured in the 58th Venice Biennale, 2019. Yi has screened her film, The Flavor Genome, at the 2017 Whitney Biennial and the International Film Festival of Rotterdam, 2017. In 2016, she was awarded the Hugo Boss Prize for outstanding achievement in contemporary art. She is represented by Gladstone Gallery and 47 Canal, New York.&nbsp; Yi's Hyundai Commission at Tate’s Turbine Hall is scheduled to open in October 2020. It will be curated by Mark Godfrey, senior curator; Petra Schmidt, production manager; and Carly Whitefield, assistant curator.

Anicka Yi on nonhuman ecologies and embodied machines

Andreas Petrossiants speaks with Marina Vishmidt about her book, Speculation as a Mode of Production: Forms of Value Subjectivity in Art and Capital.&nbsp; Marina Vishmidt is a writer and editor. She teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work has appeared in South Atlantic Quarterly, Ephemera, Afterall, Journal of Cultural Economy, Australian Feminist Studies, and Radical Philosophy, among others, as well as a number of edited volumes. She is the co-author of Reproducing Autonomy (with Kerstin Stakemeier) (Mute, 2016), and Speculation as a Mode of Production: Forms of Value Subjectivity in Art and Capital (Brill 2018 / Haymarket 2019). She is one of the organisers of the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought at Goldsmiths, a member of the Marxism in Culture collective and is on the board of the New Perspectives on the Critical Theory of Society series (Bloomsbury Academic).

Marina Vishmidt: Speculation as a Mode of Production

Luis Camnitzer and editor Ben Eastham have a conversation following the June 2020 publication of One Number Is Worth One Word, the latest in the e-flux journal book series with Sternberg Press.&nbsp; For nearly 60 years, Luis Camnitzer has been obsessing about the same things. As an art student in Uruguay in 1960, Camnitzer was part of a collective of artists, students, and educators who reformed the School of Fine Arts in Montevideo. Today, he is still an “ethical anarchist” preoccupied with the role of education in redistributing power in society. “If we keep digging,” he writes, “it becomes clear that these ideas existed way before us, will persist long after we are gone, and will do so regardless of who speaks or writes of them... The important question is whether they will ever be absorbed.” At the vanguard of 1960s Conceptualism, Camnitzer has worked primarily in printmaking, sculpture, and installations. His humorous, biting, and often politically charged use of language as an art medium has distinguished his practice, influencing generations of socially engaged artists. Though based in New York since 1964, his practice remains intrinsically connected to Uruguay and Latin America, and he represented Uruguay in the 43rd Venice Biennale in 1988. As well as many solo exhibitions, his work has featured in biennials including the Bienal de la Habana, Cuba; Whitney Biennial, New York; and documenta 11, Kassel. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Tate, London; the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo; and the Museo de Arte Latino Americano de Buenos Aires, among others. Edited by Ben Eastham, One Number Is Worth One Word spans over half a century of the artist’s radical engagement with art education and its institutions, and includes many texts published for the first time. This is a singularly authoritative, antiauthoritarian gathering of a life’s work in art, education, and activism. With mischievous wit and wisdom, Camnitzer’s writings summon an inherent utopianism in egalitarian, participatory models of art education to identify how meaning is made. &nbsp;Available from  (distributed by MIT Press).

Luis Camnitzer on One Number Is Worth One Word

Conversations with some of the most engaged artists and thinkers working today.

e-flux is a publishing platform and archive, artist project, curatorial platform, and enterprise which was founded in 1998. Its news digest, events, exhibitions, schools, journal, books, and the art projects produced and/or disseminated by e-flux describe strains of critical discourse surrounding contemporary art, culture, and theory internationally. Its monthly publication e-flux journal has produced essays commissioned since 2008 about cultural, political, and structural paradigms that inform contemporary artistic production.

e-flux

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks