“Wir sind ihr / They are us” 

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From its first issue in 1990, Texte zur Kunst has addressed aesthetic developments in tandem with political change. We now take issue #105 “Wir sind ihr/They are us” to more closely consider the nationalist, conservative, and racist ideologies that have recently become more visible across Europe and in the United States. At the core of this issue—which has been advised by Helmut Draxler, Isabelle Graw, and Susanne Leeb—we take stock of various forms of movement, migration, and border politics (of humans, of data, of patrimony, of signs), and the tipping point beyond which liberal institutions are no longer capable of arbitrating “truth.” Conceived prior to the US presidential election, and produced amid the chaos of the new administration’s first weeks, this issue, while providing a cooler, more distant reflection on the moment we’re currently experiencing, also cannot help but stand as a reflection of political-aesthetic thinking at a time so seemingly accelerated that the very terms and events used to discursively engage have several times, during the creation of this issue shifted in meaning overnight.

Main section (in English and German):

“But Who Is ‘They’?”
A roundtable discussion with Manuela Bojadžijev, Nikita Dhawan, and Christoph Menke, moderated by Helmut Draxler, on refugee and migrant flows as a challenge for political thought

“Overcoming Mute Relations, or Thinking with Your Feet”
Angela Melitopoulos in conversation with Susanne Leeb

“The Powers of the False”
Sven Lütticken

“Blondes Have Less Fun”
Caroline Busta 

“Local Time, or the Presence of an Ancient Past”
Susanne Leeb

“Europe’s Borders and the Mobile Undercommons”
Brigitta Kuster

“Timeline of the ‘Alt-Fact’”
Daniel Keller

Reviews (partial listing):

John Kelsey on meditations in an emergency (English)

Ulrike Bergermann on Deutscher Kolonialismus at the Deutschen Historischen Museum, Berlin (German)

Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer on the Feuerle Collection, Berlin (German)

Diedrich Diederichsen on the shifting structure of the Volksbühne, Berlin (German)

Tom McDonough on Adam Curtis’s film HyperNormalisation (English)

Daniel Loick on Donna Haraway’s book Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene (German)

Anke Dyes and Anna Voswinckel on Jill Soloway’s TV series I Love Dick (German)

Emily Segal on Cat Marnell’s memoir How to Murder Your Life (English)

Christian Egger on Raymond Pettibon at the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (German)

Micaela Durand on Heji Shin at Real Fine Arts, New York (English)

Abbe Schriber on Kerry James Marshall at the Met Breuer, New York (English)

Ben Caton on The Ulm Model at Raven Row, London (English)

Tina Schulz on Willem Oorebeek at Magazin 4, Bregenz (German)

Obituaries:
Barbara Weiss (1960–2016) in the words of Monika Baer & John Miller (English), and Andreas Siekmann (German)

John Berger (1960–2017) in the words of Tom Holert (German), and Svetlana Alpers (English)

Plus artists’ editions by:
Joe Bradley
Charline von Heyl

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