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CFA Berlin Berlin Ist Kultur CFA Berlin Berlin Ist Kultur
28. March 2025

SEND IN THE CLOWNS Sasha Rossman on Amy Sillman at the Kunstmuseum Bern

With her first institutional survey in Europe, which opened in Bern last fall, Amy Sillman expands the well-established temporal dimension of her practice, which includes layers, series, and repetitions, into a dialogue with the Kunstmuseum’s collection. The coiled quality of her gestures – the physicality of the mark as well as the process of its making that are at play in her paintings – manifests here in art historical constellations and murals across the two-storied exhibition space as well as in her own work. As Sasha Rossman argues, this results in a suspenseful viewing experience that subverts the linearity of time and fixity of position both humorously and rebelliously.

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19. March 2025

DIE GESCHICHTEN DER ANDEREN Annette Weisser über „Parrot Terristories“ von Hörner/Antlfinger im TA T – Tieranatomisches Theater, Berlin

Die Gier nach Territorien und Rohstoffen, die zur Vertreibung ganzer Bevölkerungsgruppen führte und die politische Landschaft heute wieder besonders unverhohlen bestimmt, hat seit der Kolonialzeit auch zahllose Tierpopulationen zerstört. Inwieweit Strafbestände des Völkerrechts wie „Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit“ auch nichtmenschliche Tiere einbeziehen sollten, ist angesichts des sechsten Massenaussterbens vermehrt Gegenstand philosophischer Debatten und künstlerischer Produktion. Das Duo Hörner/Antlfinger nimmt diesbezüglich eine Vorreiter*innenrolle ein und verfolgt den Ansatz der Interspecies Justice besonders ganzheitlich und konsequent. Mit Blick auf eine Ausstellung, zu deren Urheber*innenschaft neben den beiden in Teilen auch zwei Graupapageien zählen, erläutert Annette Weisser, wo die artenübergreifende Kollaboration an Grenzen stößt und warum es dennoch ein Umdenken bei ihr bewirkt hat.

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March 2025

Current Issue

Issue No. 137
March 2025
„Death Drive and Sublimation“

The escalation of ecological, military, and capitalist destruction has dominated current developments in many places. This issue of TEXTE ZUR KUNST puts forward two psychanalytical concepts that lend themselves to describing destructive tendencies, as well as to possible ways of redirecting aggression away from violence and into creative work: the death drive and sublimation. Contributions subject these concepts to a discursive stress test and set them in relation to historical and contemporary examples of artistic production. Although this does not alleviate structural hopelessness and its affective dimension, it makes these amenable to negotiation.

To the table of contents

14. March 2025

THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL COHESION? Kate Brehme on Berlin’s Austerity Politics in the Cultural Sector

The drastic budget cuts that the Berlin federal state government passed at the end of 2024 set an alarming precedent for the coming years and at the federal level. The cuts disproportionately affect initiatives and projects by and for marginalized groups and individuals – a fact that reveals the ideological bias of these austerity measures. In the second contribution to this series on the status of Berlin’s cultural politics, Kate Brehme, cofounder of Berlinklusion, gives an account of the activist, educational, and curatorial work necessary to provide access to cultural participation for all inhabitants of the city and reports on the threats this hard-fought for infrastructure faces today.

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14. March 2025

Seen & Read

BELLA FREUD, GARTH GREENWELL, SYLVIE FLEURY Seen & Read – by Isabelle Graw

Fashion nevertheless: The new edition of “Seen & Read” begins on Bella Freud’s couch, where the designer – inspired by her great-grandfather’s psychoanalytic method – welcomes celebrity friends from the creative industries and has them talk about their relationships to fashion. From Freud’s talking cure we move on to the hospital, where the protagonist-narrator of Garth Greenwell’s most recent novel finds himself under observation in an environment that leads him to reflect on the current changes in society and the potential of poetry. Finally, Isabelle Graw draws a line back to fashion with her discussion of Sylvie Fleury’s most recent exhibition in Paris, which included a personal favorite: Fleury’s Celine Bag.

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Artists' Editions

Heimo Zobernig, "ohne Titel", 2025

12. March 2025

THE ROSY GLOW OF NON-VIOLENCE Elliot Gibbons on Hamad Butt at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

In the first retrospective of Hamad Butt’s work, early drawings and paintings by the artist are presented alongside a series of his installations that make use of biotechnology from the 1990s, a time when the loose group that was later called the Young British Artists first gained traction. While the latter works have been frequently exhibited, the former are to be discovered here. Central to both is a symbolism that underscores the tension between life and death; this moved from the pictorial to the exhibition space over the course of Butt’s career, which was cut short by the artist’s untimely passing. In this review, Elliot Gibbons elaborates on the twofold nature of Butt’s work as well as on its commentary on corporal and subjective integrity at the height of the HIV and AIDS epidemic.

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7. March 2025

PAY ATTENTION (TO YOUR ATTENTION) Gob Squad on Berlin’s Austerity Politics in the Cultural Sector

In times of ceaseless doom news, it’s all too easy to lose focus and feel defeated. While they are no longer leading the headlines, the drastic cuts to Berlin’s public funding for culture, education, and science continue to require our attention. We invited some of the cultural workers who have helped make this city the cultural and artistic hub that it is to reflect on the status quo of Berlin’s cultural politics. In the first of three contributions, the performance collective Gob Squad offers a utopian vision that counters the prevailing rhetoric of mourning. They propose to consciously spend attention as a practice to retain agency and share where they’ve spent theirs recently.

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28. February 2025

ARTE IN ABBONDANZA Erik Verhagen on “Arte Povera” at the Bourse de Commerce, Paris

Artworks that were made to counter institutional power structures and market conventions, exhibited on the initiative of a super-rich entrepreneur and collector, and in not just any of his imposing exhibition houses but in the Parisian venue that historically served as the home of the French capital’s commodity and stock exchange? The clash is obvious. Yet the contrast could potentially be used productively – especially with the lavish spaces and financial resources that François Pinault and his team have at their disposal – to convey the original motivations of Arte Povera and present its works according to the movement’s down-to-earth and here-to-engage-with spirit. Unfortunately, this opportunity was recently wasted, reports Erik Verhagen, sharing his sincere disappointment.

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26. February 2025

UNYIELDING SHIT SHOW Adrian Ruth Williams on Jeff Koons and Peter Jennings – Live and Untelevised

In the preface to our current issue, “Lecture,” we argue that conversation formats have forfeited some of their constructive potential in times of increasing polarization. Without devaluing the talk format per se, it can be added that its destructive side has a long pop-cultural history. The TV talk show is particularly notorious for seeking spectacle and exposing its guests for the audience’s amusement. The malicious tone that made many such shows famous is a stranger to the artist talk, which is typically complaisant and often carried out as promotional framing for exhibitions. Dubious public exposure and sharp cross-examination are rare here. But there are exceptions. The artist Adrian Ruth Williams reports on a talk that took place over 20 years ago, which confounds her to this day.

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TEXTE ZUR KUNST stands for controversial discussions and contributions by internationally leading writers on contemporary art and culture. Alongside ground-breaking essays, the quarterly magazine – which was founded in Cologne in 1990 by Stefan Germer (†) and Isabelle Graw and has been published, since 2000, in Berlin – offers interviews, roundtable discussions, and comprehensive reviews on art, film, music, the market, fashion, art history, theory, and cultural politics. Since 2006, the journal's entire main section has been published in both German and English. Additionally, each issue features exclusive editions by internationally renowned artists, who generously support the magazine by producing a unique series.