Book launch of Daniel Birnbaum & Kim West: Life on Sirius

Daniel Birnbaum and Kim West’s essay Life on Sirius: The Situationist International and the Exhibition After Art is the third volume in the series All the King’s Horses, published by Sternberg Press. The book will be launched in Moderna Museet’s Pontus Hultén Study Gallery on February 10 (6pm) in conjunction with the exhibition Comparative Vandalism: Photography from the Asger Jorn Archive, on display until February 19.

Birnbaum and West’s essay explores the relationship that the Situationist International developed with the museum, more specifically the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and with the idea of the exhibition in general. Through some speculative and inconclusive juxtapositions, it attempts to gauge the consequences of this relationship, characterized by unease, for artistic production on the one hand and the art institution on the other.

All the King’s Horses is a series of exhibitions, seminars and events that investigate the legacies and the actuality of the Situationist movement. It poses two general questions: what are the histories of this movement, understood as an international network of associated groups and fractions? And in what ways do Letterist, Situationist and Post-Situationist concepts, theories and techniques continue to inform current cultural production? The project is organized by Moderna Museet in collaboration with Allianz Kulturstiftung.

The Pontus Hultén Study Gallery is a site for curatorial experimentation and research. Designed by Renzo Piano it is perhaps the best testament to the playfulness and democratic ambition of the museum’s early years. Forthcoming events will focus on Dan Graham’s Rock My Religion, a film produced by Moderna Museet in 1983 and on Leif Elggren & Carl Michael von Hausswolff’s expansive archive.


Daniel Birnbaum & Kim West
Life on Sirius: The Situationist International and the Exhibition After Art
Sternberg Press
ISBN 978-3-956791-06-2