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There is always more to read than time to read. What follows here is an eclectic list of articles, journals, special issues and the likes that passed my desk in January. There is no given order to them, no hierarchy. I hope they will serve as a miscellaneous reading list for those moments when you actually find yourself with time on your hands and no clue what to read.

Uncertainty

Many people will start a new year with at least as many uncertainties as they had at the end of the previous year. "To be living is to be uncertain", writes Kathy Noble in Tate Etc, issue 30. Her article Yes, But, or Maybe, or Perhaps, or Probably takes us through an overview of uncertainties and ambiguities in art. According to Charles Esche, "Art is one of the only means today where ambivalence can still survive".

Buildings are not excluded from uncertainty, even when they are fairly new and fancy. Proofs of this is the imminent destruction of the former American Folk Art Museum, "an only thirteen-year-old gem by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien" as Peter Schjeldahl writes for The New Yorker. The building is deemed ‘too precious’ and needs to go. The writer draws a parallel between this attitude and the event culture in the arts:

"There’s a timely logic to institutional trashings of the unrelaxed, unopen, and precious, in line with recent installation and performance art. The popularity, relative cheapness, and space- and calendar-filling efficiency of such works have inspired museum administrators to recast art as a service industry, bent on entertaining a customer who is always right."

Peter Schjeldahl, MOMA with Wrecking Ball, Read it ONLINE

Performance

There are also quiet some articles in this month’s reading dealing with performance art in a more positive way, as a medium for experimentation and empowerment, for example, and not just a space-filling and audience pleasing medium. In the aforementioned Tate Etc issue an article by co-curator Capucine Perrot looks at the BMW Tate Life: Performance Room series that is now starting its third year. The formula is simple: “each artist is invited to spend a week rehearsing at Tate Modern, which culminates in a unique presentation in front of the camera”. This is then streamed live on YouTube. The rules are simple, “one room, one camera, and no postproduction”. Coming up is Cally Spooner on February 27, 2014. Live on Tate live

The current edition of the online magazine ArteZine edited by Adham Hafez, the founder of HaRaKa, a non-profit platform for research and development in the field of dance and performance in Egypt, explores power dynamics in the art world, and as a consequence it also deals with propaganda and the role of the state in shaping certain dynamics of power. http://www.arteeast.org/category/the_quarterly/

The article by Abdullah Al-Bayyari deals with power, manipulation and the body, as he studies what political performances are in the Arab world right now:

"Our bodies are physical and conceptual constructions. They are reactive, they are engineered, they are recycled and reproduced within specified and intersecting spaces."

Abdullah Albayyari, RESI[LIENCE]STANCE, Read it ONLINE

Thematic issues

There are some curious and interesting themes being explored this January. Cabinet, issue 51 magazine has a special section on Wheels with, for example, Christopher Turner and Simon Schaffer on The absolutist promise of perpetual motion or Jeff Dolven and John V. Fleming on A ride on the wheel of fortune.

n.paradoxa, the international feminist art journal, explores in its 33rd volume, the work of contemporary women artists whose work examines religious subjects, readings and themes. The volume takes a multi-faith, multi-denominational, trans-generational and trans-national view of this subject, drawing on diverse religions from Buddhism, Tangri, Sufism, Christianity, Judaism, paganism and matriarchal cults and cultures. Topics include sacrilege, freedom of expression and women’s role in a variety of religious faiths and belief systems.

Flash Art International, no. 294, finally, zooms in on Los Angeles with Three insights on Sterling Ruby, by Gea Politi, Emi Fontana and Sam Falls. The latter stating that "Ruby’s work suits LA, it’s comfortable in its skin, because its guts are all the shit that make up this city." The issue also contains five questions about Los Angeles with answers by John Baldessari, Andrew Berardini, Haley Rose Cohen, Veronica Fernandez, Alex Freedman, Cesar Garcia, Justin Gilanyi and Heather Harmon, Piero Golia, Alex Israel, Maggie Kayne, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Julie Miyoshi, Pentti Monkkonen, Erica Redling, Adrian Rosenfeld, Analia Saban, James Salzmann, Ed Schad, Benjamin Trigano, and Oscar Tuazon.

New!

A new magazine that launched this month is the triannual online journal called The Enemy that invites writers, artists, academics, and activists to present essays and projects outside the mainstreams of their practices and disciplines. The launch issue promises an eclectic discovery of topics with, for example, a response to the new vogue for curating Iranian art by Gelare Koshgozaran, a previously unheard audio performance by Michael Smith and Mike Kelley or a reconsideration of the bully epidemic by C.J. Pascoe and a retort to lap-dancing by Mimi Cabell.

"In the past decade neuroscience has expanded into nearly every aspect of our daily life, effecting perceptions of self, labor, and otherness. As popular interest grows, myriad propositions for personal enrichment, increase of capital, and the control of consumers have entered the mass market."

“We Will Copy Your Clumsy Lies”

The funniest editorial of this month was written by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood and Anton Vidokle for e-flux journal, issue 51. In the editorial they recount a strange dream told to them during their fifth anniversary party:

"Late in the night we met a young Chinese artist through a friend, and she told us about a recurring nightmare of hers. What happens most nights is this: each time she produces an artwork, a giant barbarian with a long beard appears wielding a sword as long as a person is tall. And with the rounded blade of the sword, he slices her work in two. (…) While this might seem unusual, what happens next is much stranger. Once the barbarian has sliced through the artist’s work, the other part bursts into pure blinding light, like a gigantic paparazzi camera flash turning into a religious epiphany. And then the work is gone forever. (…) The young artist felt like dancing, and right before she headed to the dancefloor, she leaned in and screamed to us over the music: "I just remembered! The barbarian says something before he leaves!" By now we could barely hear each other. "He stares straight at me and he says: As You Free People Eat All The Light And Call It Creation We Will Copy Your Clumsy Lies Into Funky Pop and Hire Your Best Spies as Our Own Discount Cinematographers!" At least, it sounded something like that." (Editorial)

Maaike Lauwaert

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