Following her survey exhibition “Motherscape” at Albertina Modern earlier this year, Leiko Ikemura’s conception of motherhood as an act of creation outside the confines of patriarchal hierarchies and biological realities takes a new dimension in her current display at CFA in Berlin. Referencing the circular movement of the course of a day, spatially manifested in a colorful exhibition design, the sensual perception of the artist’s cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural practice is centered here. As Ruri Kawanami argues, the idiosyncrasy of her painterly style with a multitude of influences, as well as her specific understanding of motherhood, are conveyed through the work’s materiality – instead of through a fixation on essentialist terms or market-oriented tags.

In his previous letter to Annette Weisser, Bruce Hainley offered insights into the work of Wim T. Schippers, whose puckish pieces are perfect for lifting spirits. Now, Weisser brings Hainley – and us, as readers of their correspondence – back to today’s less-than-rosy political reality. Alarmed by the AfD’s election results in Saxony-Anhalt, she wonders how to cultivate moral courage, solidarity, and a sense of community in times when right-wing forces are gaining influence at a disturbing rate. She currently finds stronger impulses for this in poetry than in contemporary art – and specifically recommends a poem by Ariana Reines.

Mit Nam June Paiks „Global Groove“ brachte Wulf Herzogenrath 1977 neue Videokunst direkt in die Wohnzimmer der deutschen Bevölkerung: Im Rahmen der documenta 7 wurde das 30-minütige Video im öffentlich-rechtlichen Fernsehen ausgestrahlt. Als Kurator und Vermittler von Gegenwartskunst prägte Herzogenrath die Ausstellungs- und Museumslandschaft der Bundesrepublik seit den 1970er Jahren mit Stationen in Köln, Kassel, Berlin und Bremen. Als Kunsthistoriker verband er die Geschichte der Avantgarden mit aktuellen, oft gattungsübergreifenden künstlerischen Entwicklungen, wie Nina Schallenberg in ihrem Nachruf auf den im Juni 2026 verstorbenen Herzogenrath hervorhebt.

Die Beschäftigung mit dem Verhältnis von Mensch und Maschine ist programmatisch für das dem Schweizer Bildhauer Jean Tinguely gewidmete Museum. Dessen kinetische Skulpturen setzen der industriellen Produktionslogik ein poetisches und theatrales Verständnis von Maschinen entgegen. Dieser, zuweilen buchstäbliche, Resonanzraum umschließt die der Mechanisierung des feminisierten Körpers gewidmete Themenschau „Labouring Bodies“. Mit Rückgriff auf feministische Theorie und Kunstgeschichte seit den 1970er Jahren kartografiert die Ausstellung, wie Frauen der Lohnarbeit, der unentlohnten Sorge- und Hausarbeit und der Reproduktionsarbeit unterworfen wurden. Dabei droht, wie Eva Kuhn in ihrer Rezension argumentiert, allerdings der nicht im Dienst des Kapitals stehende Anteil von Körper und Subjektivität aus dem Blick zu geraten, der nicht zuletzt in Beziehungen – auch zur Maschine – aufscheint.

The latest exchange between our two columnists-cum-pen pals, Bruce Hainley and Annette Weisser, begins with a letter dedicated to Wim T. Schippers, who cofounded the short-lived A-dynamische Groep, or A-dynamic Centre, artist collective with Ger Van Elk and Bob Wesdorp in 1961. Schippers died on the very day that Hainley landed in Amsterdam from Houston during his most recent trip to Europe. While Schippers’s conceptual artistic works and TV productions are quite well known in the Netherlands, they do not receive the attention they deserve in the international art world, as Hainley points out in his letter to Weisser. Since we are also privy to their correspondence, we too can enjoy a brief introduction to a body of work that owes its current appeal not least to its heartwarming humor.

The first exhibition at mumok under the leadership of Fatima Hellweg, “Terminal Piece,” centers on the eponymous installation by artist, activist, and author Kate Millett, a work that raises questions about the representation and perception of violence. Based on these guiding questions, over 400 commissioned works, loans, and pieces from the museum’s own collection are dramatically staged. Their presentation employs the logic of the theater and what was elsewhere called “mood” – with reference to Tolia Astakhishvili’s concurrent exhibition at mumok. Drawing on Millett’s work, Sophia Rohwetter considers the symbolic and real cage as both an auditorium and a stage for imposed and internalized confines.

“Grass Babies, Moon Babies,” Ei Arakawa-Nash’s Japan Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, is just one example of the recent surge in creative explorations of queer parenting and collective care. In literature, alongside Kate Davies, Lotte Jeffs, Claire Lynch, and Torrey Peters, whose respective books “Nuclear Family,” “This Love,” “A Family Matter,” and “Detransition, Baby” have all been published within the last five years, Calla Henkel has now turned her attention to this topic, too – staying true to the characteristic genre-bending style that has already defined her previous books. In “Four Terrible Parents,” it’s not just the creepy queerphobia of the rural setting in the US South, where the chosen family from Henkel’s novel settles down, that sends chills down your spine. The narrative of her book, which William Kherbek reviews here without giving too much away, also revolves around a criminal case as well as family tragedies both big and small.

Giselle’s Books is not a bookstore. Its two founders, Lucas Jacques-Witz and Ryder Morey-Weale, conceived it as an editorial organization. Now operating out of two neighboring spaces in Marseille, the duo runs a learning library, publishes materials, and organizes readings, exhibitions, and now also residencies. With the project “Giselle & Juliet,” which is billed as a hybrid of activated archive and curatorial fiction, Giselle’s Books will be part of the Berlin Art Week this coming Saturday – and is gaining international presence in other contexts as well. Here, Michaela Melián, who has made Marseille her second home, weaves an introduction to Giselle’s Books’ activities into a portrait of the southern French metropolis, which an ever-growing number of artists and culture workers regard as a place of community and refuge.