December 2015 / issue no. 100 “The Canon”
Our 100th issue is dedicated to the question of the “canon.” We take up this theme with an interest in reflecting on the journal’s own role in the field of contemporary art—one that, when first initiated in 1990, was markedly counter-canonical, vigorously contesting certain methods of critique while supported others over. And yet, we pause here to acknowledge that after 25 years, we have also doubtlessly played a crucial part in shaping a particular discourse, even normativizing it to some degree. Could it even be said that TzK has established a canon in its own right? With this issue, we now take stock of what TzK’s relationship to the canon might be, and moreover, what the notion of canonicity in 2015 might now represent.
As the contributions to the issue reveal, Texte zur Kunst is driven by a range of different critical positions and has been sustained by diverse, evolving, and occasionally incompatible lines of argument. While in this regard, TzK is hardly a monolithic enterprise, it has nevertheless demarcated a common ground of theoretical and artistic reference, as well as a cohesive social milieu built on friendships and nourished by institutional structures. We thus see the canon not as binding and static truth, but rather as a primary locus of active art-critical debate—one tied to subjective arguments as well as normative aspirations, a canon that above all ultimately serves to define a particular “we.”
Main section (in German and English):
Tom Holert: “In Praise of Presumptuousness”
Diedrich Diederichsen: “Mike Kelley”
Sabeth Buchmann: “Judith Hopf”
Isabelle Graw: “Heimo Zobernig”
Juliane Rebentisch: “25 Artists from 1990 to 2015”
Gertrud Koch: “Polyphony or Dissonance”
Kerstin Stakemeier: “Ruth May and Jan Molzberger”
Gunter Reski: “Arno Rink”
Alexander García Düttmann: “Maria Lassnig”
Beate Söntgen: “Rosemarie Trockel”
Nick Mauss: “Ian White”
Tess Edmonson: “DIS”
Hanna Magauer: “Post-Internet”
Josephine Pryde: “The Individual”
Caroline Busta: “Bad Canon”
Simon Denny: “Disrupt”
Ken Okiishi: “Citizenship”
Valentina Liernur: “Self-reflective Subjects”
Jutta Koether: “Figure Of Paint: On The Incontrovertible!”
Pamela M. Lee: “Group Material”
Felix Vogel: “Martin Beck”
Sven Beckstette: “Sturtevant”
Claire Fontaine: “Toward a Canonic Freedom”
Sven Lütticken: “Falling Apart, Together”
Robert Kulisek and David Lieske: “Taryn Simon”
Brigitte Weingart: “Great & Small”
Helmut Draxler: “Canon of Existence, Ethics of the Break”
Image spread:
Ilya Lipkin
Reviews:
John Kelsey on Sylvère Lotringer’s Mad Like Artaud (English)
Robert Müller on Radikal Modern at Berlinische Galerie (German)
Bettina Funcke surveys shows by: Dillemuth, Genzken, Jensen, Tillmans, and von Bonin in New York (English)
Ariane Müller on to expose, to show, to demonstrate, to inform, to offer: Artistic Practices around 1990 at Mumok, Vienna (German)
Luis Felipe Fabre on In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni at Museo Jumex, Mexico City (English)
Nuit Banai on R. H. Quaytman at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (English)
Eva Birkenstock on Lea Lublin at Lenbachhaus, Munich (German)
Damon Sfetsios and Elise Duryee-Browner on Stephan Dillemuth at Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York (English)
Gareth James on Sam Lewitt at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (English)
Obituaries:
Ilka Becker remembers Peter Scheiffele (1971–2015) (German)
Tim Griffin remembers Chantal Akerman (1950–2015) (English)
Plus special anniversary editions by:
Gerhard Richter, Albert Oehlen, John Baldessari, Rosemarie Trockel, Peter Fischli, Rachel Harrison, Richard Phillips, Sarah Morris, Seth Price, Wade Guyton
Visit TEXTE ZUR KUNST online at www.textezurkunst.de.
Available by subscription at TZK Abonnement.
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