In ihrem Statement, das wir auf diesen Seiten im März 2019 veröffentlichten, beschrieb Suse Weber wie Ost-/Westerfahrungen in Kunstinstitutionen bis heute wenig aufgearbeitet und vielmehr als Identitätseinschreibung funktionalisiert wurden. Nun stehen die Feierlichkeiten zu 30 Jahre Mauerfall an, zu denen das Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig mit "Point of No Return" eine Ausstellung zu Werken zeigt, die sich mit den Ereignissen um das Jahr 1989 beschäftigen. Die Autorin Agnieszka Roguski fasst hier kuratorisch gelungene, aber auch verpasste Aspekte zusammen.

Brexit anyone? If you’re fed up with the parliamentary to and fro, then perhaps a grave outlook on the future of British society post-Brexit would be a nice escape from the current drama. The decorated Swiss-German author, Sibylle Berg, has penned just such a work, in over 600 pages of lurid detail on post-post-historical socialization. Musician Steven Warwick provides a much-needed English review of Berg’s German tome, and ponders the realities of how one lives in the shadow of impending crises.

Im Zusammenhang mit der letzten Ausgabe von Texte zur Kunst über Autofiktion wurde viel über das Format des Sich-Erinnerns im Verhältnis von Text zu Bild diskutiert. Als Beispiel galten hier vor allem die Romane von Annie Ernaux. Vor diesem Nicht-Vergessen mahnt auch der Künstler Gideon Rubin in seinen Malereien, die fast filmisch Sequenzen der Geschichte aufgreifen. Die Autorin Christina Irrgang schreibt über Rubins Ausstellung in Köln.

The long overdue first solo exhibition in Europe of the late American painter Jack Whitten, "Jack's Jack's," opened in Spring 2019 at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. The publisher of Texte zur Kunst, Isabelle Graw, took this unique exhibition as an opportunity to examine Whitten's work with regard to his latent animism. Her considerations go far beyond those of a review of the limited show, endeavoring instead to put the works shown in Berlin into the context of Whitten's larger oeuvre.

The seemingly unfulfillable search for pleasure and enjoyment is at the core of what drives us as human beings. This fact is exploited by the systems of modern capital around the world, where pleasure is structurally linked to the work we do and the gratification it supposedly affords us. But pleasure and enjoyment are also central entry points into the practice of psychoanalysis. So, where do the two come together—psychoanalysis and modern forms of labor? This shared axis structures Berlin-based philosopher Samo Tomšič's latest book, The Labour of Enjoyment. Recently, co-founder and publisher of Texte zur Kunst, Isabelle Graw, sat down with Tomšič to discuss the implications of his recent study for the field of art.

The work of the Argentinian artist Valentina Liernur sits squarely between the disciplines of performance and painting, both of which are often suffused in her exhibitions and installations. A new group of Liernur’s work was recently exhibited in their native Buenos Aires, and local artist and architect, Ana Vogelfang, offers her take on the significant of Liernur’s work.

Amid the controversy surrounding the recent withdrawal of the art prize awarded to Walid Raad by the City of Aachen, we turn our attention to neighboring Holland, where Raad was recently the recipient of his first solo exhibition in the country. As the exhibition closes, Sven Lütticken offers an analysis of the stakes of Raad’s practice beyond the dividing lines of camps and geopolitical crises. Raad’s multifarious practice puts the relationship of the archive and memory into question, building metafictional narratives out of the war-torn past of his native Beirut. In the context of the so-called “crisis of truth,” Raad’s work points away from knee-jerk claims to certainty and documentary fact, instead moving ever deeper into the fundamental void at the heart of any archive.