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This month in Artforum:
“This issue came together very fast, organized in apartments scattered across the pandemic’s epicenter,” writes editor David Velasco in his letter introducing the May/June issue. “Our nerves are on the surface, but they’re alloyed with hope.”
As Covid-19 throws the violence and injustice of one way of life into horrifically stark relief, it also forces us to envision new ways of seeing, knowing, acting, and resisting. Artforum asked 20 artists, writers, and collectives—hannah baer, the Cinema Worker Solidarity Fund (Thomas Beard, Ed Halter, Nellie Killian, and Sierra Pettengill), Wai Chee Dimock, Brian Eno, Heike Geißler, Lauren Halsey, Caroline A. Jones, John Kelsey, Eileen Myles, Yoko Ono, Paul B. Preciado, Charles Ray, Ridykeulous, Peter Saville, Stuart Schrader, Alexandro Segade, Luc Tuymans, Francesco Vezzoli, Molly Warnock, and Andrea Zittel—to contribute essays and projects reflecting on the pandemic and the worlds it may make and unmake.
“It is precisely because our bodies are the new enclaves of biopower and because our apartments are the new cells of biovigilance that it is more urgent than ever to invent new strategies of cognitive emancipation and resistance.”
—Paul B. Preciado
“Since our strange species has invented art as a way of changing ourselves, can this cultural evolutionary force emerge, postcrisis, to help pry us from misguided imaginings of ourselves as ‘individuals’?”
—Caroline A. Jones
Object Lessons: Hal Foster on the art of Donald Judd
“Judd rejected anything that looked like compromise, and, to him, a lot did.”
—Hal Foster
Body Horror: Matthew Ronay and Lane Relyea on the art of Tishan Hsu
“Has humanity flatlined? the artist seems to ask. Has technology paused evolution?”
—Matthew Ronay
Openings: Emily LaBarge on Meriem Bennani
“Bennani’s videos are filled with seductive animated embellishments, pareidolia, and anthropomorphism: an inner life given free rein.”
—Meriem Bennani
And: Anthony Byrt on the 22nd Biennale of Sydney; Jennifer Krasinski on Adam Linder and Shahryar Nashat at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Zehra Jumabhoy on the Lahore Biennale 02; and 50 exhibition reviews from around the globe.
Plus: Marina Abramović on Ulay, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung on Santu Mofokeng, Amy Taubin on Alexander Nanau’s Collective, J. Hoberman on Sergei Loznitsa’s State Funeral, Jace Clayton on Carl Craig at Dia:Beacon, Yuliya Komska on the handshake, and Duro Olowu shares his Top Ten.