On the New

On the New looks at the economies of exchange and valuation that drive modern culture's key sites: the intellectual marketplace and the archive. As ideas move from one context to another, newness is created. This continuous shifting of the line that separates the valuable from the worthless, culture from profanity, is at the center of Boris Groys's investigation which aims to map the uncharted territory of what constitutes artistic innovation and what processes underpin its recognition and appropriation.

Arts & Photography

Boris Groys

History & Criticism

Verso

Open Systems examines how international artists rethought the object of art in the last years of the 1960s and the early 1970s as they sought to connect with the increasingly urgent political developments of the time. Building on the structures of Minimalism and Conceptualism, the era saw the beginning of a radical departure from art's traditional focus to a new and wide-ranging experimentation with mediums that included dance, performance, and, most notably, film and video. Open Systems features the works of prominent artists working in Britain, Europe, South America, Japan, and the United States, and includes sculpture, sculptural installations, painting, film, video, photography, and printed matter. Among the artists examined are Alighiero Boetti, Marcel Broodthaers, Trisha Brown, Fluxus, Dan Graham, Ilya Kabakov, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Paul McCarthy, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, On Kawara, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Richter, Robert Smithson, Martha Rosler, and Franz West.

Open Systems: Rethinking Art c. 1970

Johanna Burton

Mark Godfrey

Tate

Ten international art related professionals consider the increased influence of independent curators and cultural producers and how the role of the curator has changed over the last ten years. Using examples from past exhibitions and personal experiences, the writers address how working within an institution differs from being independent, the difficulties of balancing artistic vision with expectations of funders and institutions, and the ethical issues of working with artists and collectors, among many other subjects. A resource text for students and others interested in the curatorial field, Cautionary Tales: Critical Curating will provide valuable and interesting reading for students considering a curatorial career and others interested in current trends in today's art world.

Cautionary Tales: Critical Curating

Jean-Hubert Martin

Sara Arrhenius

David Carrier

Kate Fowle

Dave Hickey

Geeta Kapur

Young Chul Lee

David Levi Strauss

apexart

The perceived rules of the development and running of alternative spaces, and where those rules came from, are among the questions answered by the authors of Playing by the Rules: Alternative Thinking/Alternative Spaces. The underlying message in the publication is the importance of critical thinking as well as the need for alternative thinking. In the book s preface, Steven Rand (artist and the Founder and Executive Director of apexart) addresses the role of the alternative space and the need for alternative thinking to challenge some of the art world s practices and the ways apexart has tried to address them over the last 16 years. A few of the essays provide some history of alternative spaces. Robert Atkins (art historian, critic, and curator based in California) uses as an example the salons of the 1920s, specifically Mabel Dodge s, to show how a true alternative functioned. René Block (gallerist and former director of the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany) gives a brief history of how alternatives began and an introduction to the Berlin space TANAS. Using case studies of art venues in China, Vietnam, and Cambodia over the last 20-30 years, Biljana Ciric (independent curator based in Shanghai) explores the potentials of alternatives. Other essays use other alternatives as example. Irene Tsatsos (writer and curator and former Executive Director of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) uses examples of permaculture housing as alternative living arrangement and Matta-Clark s restaurant Food as alternative venue in the 1970s to demonstrate the importance of critical thinking and unrestrained creative expression. Marina Grzinic (philosopher, artist and theoretician based in Ljubljana) presents the construction of normality to help define alternative. Naeem Mohaiemen (writer, artist, and technologist working in Dhaka and New York) uses as main example the Paris exhibition of works from Bangladesh to show how an alternative approach to standard procedure is necessary. Other essays reaffirm the importance of thinking critically. Sofija Grandakovska (academic, theorist, and poet in Skopje) uses the dissident, as an example to explore the importance of critical thinking and searches for the alternative space for the dissident. Julie Ault (artist, writer, and editor based in New York) reviews her previous writing on alternative spaces and shares the importance of reflexivity in continually asking what we are doing and why. Winslow Burleson (Assistant Professor of Human Computer Interaction at Arizona State University; received his PhD from the MIT Media Lab) shares his work in the field of Human Computer Interaction to present a series of motivational tools for young people working in the arts today. Some texts reveal ways to achieve a new alternative space. Renaud Ego (poet based in Paris) shows the alternative aspects in the field of writing and mentions technology, specifically the Internet, as a place for free expression. Boris Groys (philosopher, essayist, art critic, media theorist, and professor at New York University) also explores the power of the Internet as he argues that the de-professionalization of art is a highly professional operation and further that weak images have the most power. The future of alternative spaces may lie in a non-venue. Pablo Helguera (artist and Director of Adult and Academic Programs at the Education Department of MoMA, NY) suggests we ought to (re)consider our audience and that perhaps the public program and a traveling venue is a more appropriate approach to reaching current audiences. Raphael Rubinstein (New York-based poet and art critic and past editor at Art in America) reviews some of the changes that have evolved since alternative spaces began in the 1970s. More information: apexart.org/publications/playingbytherules.htm

Playing by the Rules: Alternative Thinking/ Alternative Spaces

Robert Atkins

Marina Grzinic

Raphael Rubinstein

Julie Ault

Steven Rand

Rene Block

Winslow Burleson

Biljana Ciric

Renaud Ego

Sofija Grandakovska

Pablo Helguera

Naeem Mohaiemen

Irene Tsatsos

If all things in the world can be considered as sources of aesthetic experience, then art no longer holds a privileged position. Rather, art comes between the subject and the world, and any aesthetic discourse used to legitimize art must also necessarily serve to undermine it. Following his recent books Art Power and The Communist Postscript, in Going Public Boris Groys looks to escape entrenched aesthetic and sociological understandings of art―which always assume the position of the spectator, of the consumer. Let us instead consider art from the position of the producer, who does not ask what it looks like or where it comes from, but why it exists in the first place.
Boris Groys is Professor at New York University and Senior Research Fellow at the Academy of Design, Karlsruhe. He is the author of many books, including The Total Art of Stalinism, Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment, Art Power, The Communist Postscript, History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism.
e-flux journal Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle

Going Public (E-Flux Journal)

Sternberg Pr

Topologie der Kunst

Hanser, Carl GmbH + Co.

Alexander Kosolapov: Sots Art

Alexander Borovsky

Lyudmila Novikova

Kerber Christof Verlag

To celebrate the fortieth issue of Parkett, the editors present a special thematic issue. When beauty reemerges from Postmodernism, what does it look like? And how, when contemporary life demands so many different things from contemporary art, do we strike a balance between history and presence, politics and humor? Taking the children's game of Snakes and Ladders as a guiding metaphor, this gala issue offers six mini-collaborations: Holland Cotter on Francesco Clemente; Boris Groys on Peter Fischli and David Weiss; David Rimanelli and Max Weechsler on Gunther Förg; Gordon Burn on Damien Hirst; Joan Simon on Jenny Holzer; and Gilbert Lascault on Rebecca Horn. Also in this issue: Dave Hickey on magic, Vik Muniz on apparitions, Jeff Perrone on boards and borders, Roger Denson on nomadic critical theory, and much more.

Parkett No. 40/41 Snakes & Ladders

Holland Cotter

David Rimanelli

G. Roger Denson

Bice Curiger

Joan SImon

Jeff Perrone

Parkett

Volverse publico. Las transformaciones del arte en el agora contemporanea

Caja negra

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Books by Boris Groys