Nicolas Bourriaud

Caroline Schneider

The French writer Nicolas Bourriaud discusses how, since the early nineties, an ever increasing number of artworks have been created on the basis of preexisting works; more and more artists interpret, reproduce, re-exhibit, or use works made by others or available cultural products. This art of postproduction seems to respond to the proliferating chaos of global culture in the information age, which is characterized by an increase in the supply of works and the art worlds annexation of forms ignored or disdained until now. First published in 2002, this 2nd edition contains a new foreword where the author reflects on how the art of postproduction developed over the last couple of years.Nicolas Bourriaud is the co-director of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. His previous books include Lère tertiaire (Flammarion), Ésthétique relationnelle (Presses du réel), and Formes de vie (Denoël).

Culture as Screenplay : how Art Reprograms the World

Postproduction

Hemma Schmutz

Antje Majewski became best known through her series of photorealistic, figurative paintings, which grapple with existential questions like friendship, love, masquerade, and death. Her topics also revolve around the psychology of individuals in relation to society, history, and social norms. This comprehensive catalogue traces the many stages of her work, including paintings, photographs, videos, film, installation, and dance theatre. The art critic Dominic Eichler highlights the most important thematic threads in Majewski's oeuvre and shows “that in terms of thinking about the fantasy figures, performance, roles and costumes …, the theoretical backdrop is informed by a progressive form of feminism. In particular, Judith Butler's thesis about the importance of performance and performativity in the construction of gender should be taken into account.” The author Ingo Niermann claims that “whether (she) paints people in their everyday appearance or a staged one, she subordinates herself. Whatever can be seen stays with the people. They are the actual images whose real presentation is only a fleeting one.” Curator Sebastian Cichocki contributes a fierce foray into the supernatural world of a psychic, while Majewski's conversation with art historian Tanja Widmann reveals some of the personal and philosophical concerns underlying her practice. Published on the occasion of Majewski's same-titled exhibition at the Salzburger Kunstverein, September 25 – November 30, 2008. Contributors Sebastian Cichocki, Dominic Eichler, Ingo Niermann Conversation with Tanja Widmann

My Very Gestures

Antje Majewski

Brian Wallis

Always There offers a comprehensive survey of American artist Julia Scher's work. The artist's installations and performances have always featured a complex relation to techno-social control, demonstrating our complicity in the proliferating technologies used to surveil both our physical and virtual identities. As Brian Wallis writes in his introduction, "Scher's work breaks linguistic codes of security, analyzing the rhetorics of surveillance discourse to allow the savvy user to manipulate and reconstitute those 'bits'. This approach is... akin to that of hackers, who, like Scher, invert the notion of usability, turning the practical on its head. On one level, this radical reversibility undoubtedly stems from some fundamental technoskepticism, but it also shows the artist's more complicated skepticism about the visual and geographical determinants of contemporary space and how they impact the practices of everyday life." The texts discuss how in the aftermath of 9-11, issues of surveillance, data harvesting and scoptophilia have acquired a new meaning. According to author Andrew Ross, "Scher is a wholly political artist with a keen eye and ear for the iconography and poetry of power, especially when it crystallizes into the operational jargon of aggressive intelligence systems." Contributors Bill Horrigan, Andrew Hultkrans, Giovanni Intra, Avital Ronell, Andrew Ross

Caroline Schneider

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