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Join us in January for a new season of programs at e-flux, featuring Alex Anikina, Boris Groys, Anton Vidokle, and Elena Zaytseva; Molly Nesbit, Hilton Als, Yasmin Ramirez, and Ann Reynolds; and Zach Blas.
We’re also pleased to present the US launch of two recent publications from Verso Books, Hito Steyerl’s Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War, and e-flux journal’s Supercommunity: Diabolical Togetherness Beyond Contemporary Art, taking place at the Guggenheim Museum and featuring Julieta Aranda, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Liam Gillick, Hito Steyerl, and Brian Kuan Wood.
Program
Cosmic Shift: Russian Contemporary Art Writing
Lecture, conversation, and screening with Alex Anikina, Boris Groys, Anton Vidokle, and Elena Zaytseva
Wednesday, January 17, 7:30pm | e-flux
Hailed as a 2017 Book of the Year by the Times Literary Supplement, the book Cosmic Shift (Zed Books, 2017) is the first anthology of Russian contemporary art writing to be published outside Russia. Join us for a presentation of the book featuring the lecture “Becoming Cosmic” by contributing author Boris Groys, followed by a conversation between contributing author Anton Vidokle and the book’s co-editor Elena Zaytseva, and a screening of the film Data Field by artist and co-editor Alex Anikina.
“After Midnight: Fast Forward Art History”
Panel with Molly Nesbit, Hilton Als, Yasmin Ramirez, and Ann Reynolds
Friday, January 19, 7pm | e-flux
On the occasion of the publication of Molly Nesbit’s book, Midnight: The Tempest Essays (Inventory Press, 2017), it seems appropriate to convene a panel to ask the general question that haunts its pages: what are the uses to which art history can be put? Or more precisely, how does art history actually function outside academe?
Clearly art history need not be confined to a single narrow register; its own genealogy is full of evidence to the contrary. Unlike art criticism it sets its own scenes for the discussion of art and artists and more. Unlike curating, art history can completely disregard the question of space since everything comes to bear elsewhere, as part of an epic or a story, as matter in time. But it might be better not to speak of art history generally and instead consider the actual work of art historians.
The earliest essays in Midnight were written in the 1980s while Molly Nesbit was teaching in New York at Columbia University. There she met Hilton Als, Yasmin Ramirez, and Ann Reynolds, all of whom would take their art history forward in their own ways. The evening at e-flux will bring them back together to talk over their sense of the possibilities now. Each of the participants will present a piece of their own work-in-progress. A discussion will ensue. Non-art historians are warmly invited.
Duty Free Art and Supercommunity
Double US book launch with Julieta Aranda, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Liam Gillick, Hito Styerl, and Brian Kuan Wood
Wednesday, January 24, 6:30–8:30pm | The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
RSVP
In collaboration with e-flux and Verso Books, the Guggenheim presents the US launch of two recent Verso publications: Hito Steyerl’s Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War, a new volume of essays by the writer, filmmaker, and artist; and Supercommunity: Diabolical Togetherness Beyond Contemporary Art, a collection of essays, poems, short stories, and plays by artists and theorists selected from the eponymous 88-text issue of e-flux journal commissioned for the 56th Venice Biennale. The evening will feature Steyerl in conversation with media theorist Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, a presentation by artist and Supercommunity contributing author Liam Gillick, and a one-act play by co-editors Julieta Aranda and Brian Kuan Wood.
Metric Mysticism
Lecture-performance by Zach Blas
Saturday, January 27, 6pm | e-flux
In this lecture-performance, artist Zach Blas gazes into the crystal balls of Silicon Valley and charts the transmutation of big data into a magical substance that predicts—and polices—our future. Focusing on the appropriation of mysticism and magic by Silicon Valley start-ups and governmental surveillance agencies alike, Blas suggests that the crystal ball, a transparent device that permits one to see into the future, has come to stand in as a paradigm for how tech entrepreneurs prefer to imagine the algorithmic processing of information.
Yet what if one were to gaze not into a crystal ball but rather a chunk of silicon? Not transparent glass but rather an opaque, geologic material at the very core of digital technology?
The event at e-flux is presented in collaboration with Art in General, in conjunction with Contra-Internet, Blas’s first solo show in New York on view from January 27–April 7, 2018.
e-flux lectures is a series of events dedicated to discovering the protocols of twenty-first century truth, assuming these still exist. Launched in February 2017, the series has thus far included contributions by James T. Hong; Oxana Timofeeva; Suad Amiry, Thomas Keenan, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal; Rijin Sahakian; Adam Kleinman; Maria Lind; Franco “Bifo” Berardi; Sven Lütticken and Tony Wood; Ute Holl; Liam Young; Gleb Napreenko; Charles Mudede; Nora Sternfeld; Carolyn L. Kane; Ana Ofak; Vivian Ziherl and Elizabeth A. Povinelli; Gean Moreno; Jodi Dean; Andrew Herscher, Reinhold Martin, Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal; Andrew Norman Wilson; Lee Mackinnon; Francesca Hughes; Masha Gesssen; Beatriz E. Balanta and Mary Walling Blackburn; Nathan K. Hensley; Ariel Goldberg; Filipa César; Tavi Meraud and David Kim; Eyal Wizman and Malachy Brown; Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss and Nina Rappaport; Jack Self; Economic Space Agency; Marco Baravalle; Frontier Imaginaries; Assemble collective and Esther Choi; Doreen Mende; Malik Gaines; and María Iñigo Clavo—available for viewing on e-flux Video & Film.
All events will be livestreamed on e-flux.com/live.
For a list of our upcoming programs, visit our website. For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.
