Galeria Quadrum’s recent exhibition “Earthkeeping / Earthshaking – Art, Feminisms and Ecology” used the 1981 issue of US feminist art magazine “Heresies” as a starting point for a collection that aimed to “enable a sense of care, artistic agency, and heterogenous approaches to ecology and feminisms.” In the 40 years since that issue’s publication, attitudes to our earth have changed immeasurably – our ownership of it, our ruin of it, our denial. Ideas of feminism, too, now sit far more comfortably within mainstream discussions. Here, art historian Gillian Sneed considers whether the curator’s inclusion of contemporary works against the backdrop of “Heresies” as a now-historical text did enough to offer the viewer a truly diverse and intersectional depiction of a feminism for 2020.

We were aware that the “Anti-Anti-Semitism” issue would be met with debate. But the intensity of the wave of anger we faced after publication of the issue surprised and at points even unsettled us.

Versuch über die Begegnung. Das diesjährige Sheffield Doc/Fest, das Pandemie-bedingt ausschließlich online stattfand, widmete der Filmemacherin Lynne Sachs eine sorgfältig kuratierte Werkschau. Dabei zeigt sich das Gemeinschaft stiftende Moment von Sachs’ Filmen, die häufig das Ergebnis enger Kollaborationen sind – ob mit Familienmitgliedern, migrantischen Communities oder künstlerischen Weggefährtinnen wie Barbara Hammer oder Carolee Schneemann –, gerade unter den Einschränkungen durch die Pandemie: Wie die Filmkritikerin Esther Buss argumentiert, sind diese Filme stets Zeugnisse der Ambivalenz von ,einsamer‘ Kunstproduktion einerseits und geteilter Erfahrung andererseits.

Delving into the subject of “Anti-Anti-Semitism,” issue 119 of Texte zur Kunst not only takes a stance against anti-Semites, it also sides with the critics of BDS. Several members of the magazine’s advisory board have responded with a statement in which they have expressed apprehension that the issue, and the anti-BDS slant in particular, would divide the readership “between those whose focus is on fighting anti-Semitism, and those who advocate for decolonization.” That is the crux that I want to home in on in the following.

Titled “Anti-Anti-Semitism,” the September issue of Texte zur Kunst contains numerous assertions and assessments that are eminently contentious and have provoked vehement opposition. So what? When assessments are contentious, we argue over them. Such contention can turn fierce, and there is no reason to expect that we will agree. But if all goes well, clear front lines emerge.

Why it is of interest to think about boycott, censorship, state power, freedom of articulation, the public sphere, politics, and art at the same time. When intellectuals, artists, or writers call for a boycott and disassociate themselves from major cultural events, refuse to participate in them, or cancel their participation, they typically do so less as a form of punishment than as a way of drawing attention to a grievance and denouncing those they hold responsible: of protest against states of affairs that shock the conscience, against intolerable violence, against the exploitation of resources.

To sensationalize Brandy’s revival is to miss the point. After eight years of silence, Brandy released her seventh studio album, B7 last month, and yet one thing is clear: Brandy never really left. Her legacy thrives in the “abstract, hand-drawn soundscapes” of her successors, threading its way through unexpected channels. As Joel Lev and Alex Fleming unravel the web of her influence B7 winds us into the transgressive and sometimes hermetic mystery at the album’s center: Brandy herself.