The Enemy may be another country, another person, a virus, or a social phenomenon. On the theme of The Enemy: an interview with Harvard science historian Peter Galison on cybernetics pioneer Norbert Weiner and his WWII-era research into anti-aircraft weaponry, which led directly to his theories of cybernetics; an interview with Wolfgang Schivelbusch, author of The Culture of Defeat, on the effects of crushing military loss on the collective imagination; Justine Kurland's photographs of the women combatants among the Tamil resistance fighters; John Peffer interviews a military expert in the use of propaganda; and Gianni Motti exhibits AP war photographs that were deemed too beautiful to sell. Also in this issue, Marina Warner on photographing ectoplasm, Lynne Tillman on the color “chartreuse,” Jonathan Ames on presidential doodles, Anne Carson on "totality and eclipse," an artist's project by the Archive for Speculative History, and more.

Cabinet 12: The Enemy

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Cabinet

On the theme of “the Doppelganger,” Cabinet collaborates with Kabinet, a Russian journal of art and cultural theory based in Saint Petersburg. The collaborative themed section includes a comparison of American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts; Josiah McElheny on the cultural history of glass mirrors; Joseph Grigley on what trout fishing teaches us about mimetic theories of representation; and an interview with Viktor Sukhodrev, who was, for 30 years, the top diplomatic translator in the Soviet Union, present in conversations between Khruschev and JFK, Carter and Brezhnev, etc. Also in this issue, Shelley Jackson's “fold-in” essay on conjoined twins, Luc Sante on sepia and nostalgia, and artist's projects by Craig Kalpakjian, Luis Miguel Suro & Mario Torres, Josiah McElheny and more.

Cabinet 14: Doubles

SANTE, Luc

Strausbaugh, John

Weiss, Allen

Jackson, Shelley

Nagel, Alexander

An uninhibited guffaw or a nervous giggle, a derisive snicker or the malign “bwahahaa” of the comic strip villain--each form suggests that laughter has many sources of inspiration. This issue of Cabinet addresses the cultural history of laughter through a sparkling mix of essays, interviews and artist projects. Slavoj Zizek tells us what jokes can teach about Hegel; an interview with Simon Critchley shows philosophy's attempts to understand why laughter alters our understanding of the world; and a portfolio of artist-designed tickling machines commissioned for the issue provides us with joy of our own. The lustrous lineup of participants in the unthemed section includes: Steve Rowell and the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), Daniel Heller-Roazen, Jesse Lerner, Paul Lukas, Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Margaret Wertheim and Robert Lang. Artists' projects by: Emily Jacir, Marco Maggi, Michael Rakowitz, Craig Kalpakjian and Robert Bowen.

Cabinet 17: Laughter

From the perfectly organized island nation of Sir Thomas More's Utopia to the idealized mountain stronghold of Eldorado visited by the naive hero of Voltaire's Candide, the idea of the fictional state--utopian or dystopian, satirical or idealistic--has a long and distinguished pedigree in literature and philosophy. The issues explored by these classic imaginings--including questions of governmental organization, economic mechanisms, social policy and cultural norms--are just as vital today as in the past, and continue to give rise to new alternative states, nations, and principalities inspired equally by political dissent and artistic fancy. Journeying in this expanded landscape of imaginary municipalities--with its unorthodox histories, ersatz bureaucratic apparatuses, do-it-yourself credentials and fantasy topographies--Cabinet no. 18 features William Bryk on the ephemera of fictional states, George Pendle on the socio-political trajectory of micro-nations, and a conversation between David Levi Strauss and Michael Taussig on state-making and magic, as well as portfolios by invented nations including NSK, Elgaland-Vargaland, Sealand and the Hutt River Province Principality. The unthemed section includes Frances Stark on the charms of ivory; Christopher Turner on Spectro-Chrome Therapy; Samantha Hunt on Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace's “Difference Engine;” and projects by artists including Craig Kalpakjian, Sasha Chavchavadze and Caitlin Masley.

Cabinet 18: Fictional States

From actuarial tables to quantum physics to the Homeland Security threat level indicator, uncertainty remains a ubiquitous element of modern life, despite centuries of concerted effort by science and technology to mitigate its effects. Influencing both biological and social patterns of behavior, chance and its kin--randomness, probability, uncertainty, luck--also have a rich history in the world of art and literature, from the fortuitous juxtapositions of the Surrealist cadavre exquis to the automatist operations of Pollock. For its nineteenth issue, Cabinet investigates questions of chance and risk in locations ranging from the gambling hall to the laboratory, from the insurance agent's office to the fortune-teller's tent. Authors include Jeffrey Kastner on Paul Virilio's Museum of Accidents; Sasha Archibald in conversation with Jackson Lears on luck in America; Dale Pendell on the mysteries of augury; plus Cabinet's first-ever Random Reader Page Giveaway. The unthemed section features Paul Laity's history of the sandal; Tom Burr's typology of public toilets; Lyn Hejinian on cyan; Margaret Wertheim on Sodaplay; and Tom Vanderbilt on the Stasi's collection of scent samples from potential future political subversives.

Cabinet 19: Chance

Cabinet No. 20 focuses on decay and desuetude; the history, aesthetics, and politics of the fragment, the remnant, and the rubble of once-proud edifices. At what historical remove from its prime does a ruin come to seem respectably picturesque? Are there ruins that are unrecoupable to an aesthetics of attractive decay or sublime rot? Cabinet No. 20 treats the "ruin" as an unruly rubric--not just pertaining to the ruins of buildings, fortifications, industrial plants, monuments, and engineering works, but also to the ruins of substances, landscapes, ideas, images, media, institutions. A framing essay by the magazine's UK editor Brian Dillon introduces a range of texts and projects exploring these themes, including Nina Dubin on the eighteenth-century French painter Hubert Robert, known as "Robert des Ruines"; Svetlana Boym on the ruined gaze and the panorama; Joseph Masco on atomic wreckage; George Pendle on William Beckford, master of the classic Gothic pile, Fonthill Abbey; and artist projects by Ester Partegas, Martin Herbert & Darren Almond, Eric Schwab & Walead Beshty, and Jeremy Millar. The issue also includes poet Lyn Hejinian on the color cyan, Paul Laity on the history of the sandal, Steven Featherstone on the .50 rifle and Josh Foer on the world's foremost "arborsculptor."

Cabinet 20: Ruins

The idea that our time is obsessed with the modes and methods of security is by now a commonplace, yet behind this familiar syndrome lies a less-examined array of social and psychological phenomena--not just related to the nature of the threat faced (whether real or simply perceived) but also to the fundamental notions of stability and integrity these perils are understood to jeopardize. The Insecurity issue of Cabinet features Brian Dillon on hypochondria; Gaby Wood on phantom limbs; Eyal Weizman on the relationship between postmodern architectural theory and contemporary strategies of urban warfare; and Jeffrey Kastner on eighteenth-century master locksmith Joseph Bramah. It includes a conversation with Olivier Razac (on the history of barbed wire) as well as an artists' portfolio of real and imaginary "security blankets," Celeste Olalquiaga's examination of the sewers of Paris, Jenny Tobias's take on stock photography and an interview with accent coach Sam Schwa.

Cabinet: Insecurity, Issue No. 22, Summer 2006

The inherently contingent physics of shadows--never things in themselves but instead always "cast" signs of other things; tangible yet insubstantial--has long been a rich source of inspiration for thinkers and artists. From the Biblical valley where humanity is stalked by the "shadow of death" to the purported supernatural phenomenon of the shadow people, the idea has always suggested forces of the unseen, of the Other, its relational quality evoking a sense a duality that haunts our supposedly integral identities. Cabinet 24 includes interviews with Michael Baxandall on the Enlightenment's attitude toward shadows and with Victor Stoichita on the battle between light and dark, Kris Lee on Comte de Silhouette and the rise of phrenology, Julia Bryan-Wilson on the perpetually shaded Swiss town of Rattenberg, Trevor Paglen on the secret patches from clandestine divisions of the U.S. Armed Forces and George Pendle on Otto Neurath and his Everyman informational figures. Artist projects include a portfolio of shadow drawings and an unwitting contribution by a celebrated artist secretly trailed by a private detective hired by Cabinet. Plus, Jocko Weyland on the AP archive; Tony Wood on Konstantin Melnikov's proposal for a collectivized Soviet dormitory system; Amelie Hastie on eating at the cinema and Daniel Handler on the color violet.

Cabinet 24: Shadows

Handler, Daniel

Hastie, Amelie

Bryan-Wilson, Julia

Weyland, Jocko

Pendle, George

Wood, Tony

Lee, Kris

Stoichita, Victor

The sheer numbers are staggering: scientists estimate that at any one time there are ten quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) individual insects alive on the earth, the group's more than 900,000 different known types accounting for some 80 percent of the world's total species. Yet despite the ubiquity of insects, our knowledge about their true character and extent is riddled with gaps--many experts believe that for every one insect species that has been described and cataloged by entomologists, as many as 30 others remain unidentified and unstudied. Cabinet 25 includes interviews with Eugene Thacker on swarming and with Deborah Gordon on colony organization, J.B.S. Haldane on the reasons why insects are thankfully small, George Pendle on Virgil's elaborate funeral for his pet house fly, Margaret Wertheim on insect vision, Viktoria Tkaczyk on Robert Hooke's flea and Steven Connor on the cultural history of the fly. Plus, an interview with food historian Harold McGee, Frances Richard on U.S. government standards for fruits and vegetables, Sina Najafi in conversation with accent coach Sam Schwa, Sandy Zipp on the aphorisms carved into rock by auto-didact John Samuelson, Louis Kaplan on Arthur Mole's "living photographs" and Joshua Glenn on the semiotics of the Coca-Cola bottle.

Cabinet 25: Insects

Kaplan, Louis

Wertheim, Margaret

Richard, Frances

Glenn, Joshua

Connor, Steven

Haldane, J.B.S.

Tkaczyk, Victoria

Zipp, Sandy

Roger Andersson's book Letters from Mayhem is an artist's book made of 26 duotone watercolors, each depicting one letter of the alphabet. Printed on thick board in the format of a children's ABC primer, each letter is embedded in a fairytale setting in which wispy long-haired teenagers lie around stoned, sniffing glue, listening to heavy metal, and so on. This garden of vices overgrown with weeds and entangled vines forms a strange foil for imagery drawn from drug culture, anarchy, heavy metal, and children's cartoons, rendering every scene both innocent and corrupt. Full of messages hidden within plants, ponds and clouds, Andersson's drawings evoke a soft nostalgia for childhood tempered by images of soft-edged romantic decadence.

Roger Andersson: Letters From Mayhem

Roger Andersson

Sina Najafi

Albert Mobilio

Individual Artists

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