The fifth issue of the e-flux Index is now available in print and for digital download! Now entering its first year of publishing, Index #5 features all e-flux’s commissioned pieces from August–September 2024. Running to 472 beautifully-designed pages, this issue includes 54 contributions from 61 leading artists, architects, filmmakers, poets, critics, activists, philosophers, theorists, and educators, from six continents, from the living and the dead.
Index #5 is structured according to a “deviant taxonomy” of nine new emergent thematic categories. In the exploratory, playful spirit of Bas Jan Ader’s video work Primary Time (1974) or Susan Hiller’s reflection on the forbidden pleasures of childhood taxonomies, more than that of Carl Linnaeus’ reductive straitjackets, each of these categories represents an attempt at daisy cutting samples from the heterogenous, complex meadow of discourse across the arts, architecture, education, theory, and politics.
The issue begins with “Is That All There Is?”—titled after Peggy Lee’s disquieting 1969 hit song—grouping together pieces that suggest the nagging sense of lack and loss in the present moment, as well as the cynical exploitation of such affects by reactionary political actors. Elsewhere, Dens, clubs, hives, and cells examines various approaches to being governed less, from radical 70s pedagogues through to the self-governing communities of Madagascar pirates. The Tourist embarks on a journey into the fantasy-world of frictionless, smooth travel, from the “Second Suez” transport corridor in Central Asia to the blight of “art-washing” cultural tourism events. What a Body Can Do meanwhile disassembles our normative understandings of embodiment to anatomise the body at work, the body at rest, the trope of the “people’s body” (Volkskörper), and the fervent natalism of new political orders.
The printed edition of the Index is available to purchase from select art and design bookstores, as well as museums, throughout Canada, East Asia, Europe, North America, and the United Kingdom. The publication is distributed by Antenne Books (Europe and the UK), Les presses du réel (Europe), Asterism Books (USA), Art Metropole (Canada), The Book Society (East Asia), and Walther König Buchhandlung (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). Annual subscriptions, covering four issues, are available at both institutional and individual rates here.
e-flux Index #5 features contributions from: Rouzbeh Akhbari, Sanna Almajedi, Étienne Balibar, Rend Beiruti, Xenia Benivolski, Daniel Birnbaum, Hunter Bolin, Nathan Brown, Harry Burke, Luis Camnitzer, Mark Cinkevich, María Iñigo Clavo, Maya Deren, Jacob Dreyer, Anna Engelhardt, Solveig Font, Kenny Fries, Coco Fusco, Orit Gat, Leo Goldsmith, Ana María Gómez López, Andrea González Garrán, Boris Groys, Lauren van Haaften-Schick, Barbara Hammer, Dehlia Hannah, Isobel Harbison, Jörg Heiser, Yuk Hui, Kateryna Iakovlenko, Celia Irina González, Juan José Santos, Aubrey Knox, Hamlet Lavastida, Debra Lennard, Sophie Lewis, Julio Llópiz Casal, R.H. Lossin, Vijay Masharani, Azadeh Mashayekhi, Naeem Mohaiemen, Yanelys Nuñez Leyva, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Trevor Paglen, Furqat Palvan-Zade, Artavazd Peleshyan, Sol Pérez-Martinez, Precarious Workers Brigade, Irit Rogoff, Mila Samdub, Stephanie Sherman, Henk Slager, Jonas Staal, Bernard Stiegler, Thotti, Ina Valkanova, Elena Vogman, Pramodha Weerasekera, Evan Calder Williams, Virginia Woolf, and Gary Zhexi Zhang.
ISBN: 9772997195052 / Print ISSN: 2997-1950 / Digital ISSN: 2998-2359, March 2025. Printed in a limited edition in Porto.