Interventions, Volume 02, Issue 01: Borders and the Global Contemporary Widely recognized as the moment that ushered in the era of globalization, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 emblematized freedom and unity. The current global reality, however, is a far cry from the neoliberal promises of a globalized future marked by progress and … Read more
HOMELAND SECURITY: BORDERS AND THE GLOBAL CONTEMPORARY
In conjunction with this issue of Interventions, the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University held a symposium entitled Homeland Security: Borders and the Global Contemporary on September 27, 2012. Part of an annual discussion series organized by graduate students in the Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies program, this event was developed by Cecelia Thornton-Alson, Carmen Ferreyra, and … Read more
NOTES ON dOCUMENTA (13)
by Kaira M. Cabañas* We can probably say that moral questions have always arisen when moral norms of behavior have ceased to be self-evident and unquestioned in the life of a community. –Adorno, … Read more
ARTIST’S PROJECT: BULLETPROOF
by Milagros de la Torre* Bulletproof is a photographic series completed in 2008 by Peruvian-born and New York-based conceptual photographer Milagros de la Torre. The photographs—at once innocuous and foreboding—soberly document innovations in bulletproof clothing. Printed on soft cotton paper, the photographs display the relatively lightweight and flexible everyday designs initially developed for heads of … Read more
ADORNIAN ETHICS FOR THE DIGITAL ERA
by Jaime Schwartz* There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. –Walter Benjamin Theodor Adorno directly addressed the ethics of aesthetic response to historical trauma, famously stating that “to write lyric poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”[1] With these immortal words, Adorno is not condemning all aesthetic expression … Read more
BETWIXT AND BETWEEN: DISPLACEMENT AND LIMINALITY IN LAURA WADDINGTON’S “BORDER”
by Marion Hohlfeldt* We can’t literally go home again. –Stuart Hall As sociologists Riccardo Bocco and Daniel Meier[1] remind us, the notion of a border does not conform to a simple definition: it indicates an unstable zone that is conceptually, physically, and even legally indeterminate. The border produces dreams of transition, of instigating the very … Read more
THE LIMINAL BODY: ASSEMBLAGE AND IDENTITY IN MAÏMOUNA’S FEMALE ICONS
by Michelle Apotsos* The medium of the constructed body—the heart of Patrizia Guerresi Maïmouna’s creative practice—functions as a site for both contested and contesting identities. Assembled from diverse religious, cultural, and ethnic iconographies, the female bodies in Maïmouna’s work blur boundaries and create slippages between historically fixed binaries such as Africa and the West, Islam … Read more
ARTIST’S PROJECT: LATE EDITION
by Jin Joo Chae* Late Edition is an additive work, which I have been working on for a month. I burn copies of the New York Times and add them to the work daily. Formally, this piece creates negative and positive spaces. The ashes around the stacks of paper remain stubborn traces of the past while … Read more
GEOPOLITICAL TENSIONS AND PROBLEMATICS OF EXHIBITING: EXTERRITORY PROJECT
by Sascha Crasnow* Geopolitical tension pervades the Israel/Palestine region. Within the art world, this strife dictates the who, where, and how of exhibition practice. Since the 2004 launch of the Cultural Boycott of Israel, many Palestinian and Arab (as well as other international) artists refuse to exhibit their work in Israeli institutions or at events … Read more
WHO, BY WHOM, AND FOR WHOM: PRESENTATION OF CONTEMPORARY ART IN IRAN AND REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ART OF IRAN ELSEWHERE
by Sandra Skurvida* In a sociopolitical context where national legislation heavily mediates the private and public sphere, how do art and curatorial practice intervene to both convey and resist the limits set on the circulation of art in public life? How does the social impact of art manifest itself within a space of regulated spectatorship? … Read more
TRACES: LAND USE AND REPRESENTATION IN ARIZONA, U.S.A. AND SONORA, MEXICO BORDER ARTS
by John-Michael H. Warner*[1] Border art[2] histories map everyday human experience onto the economic, political, and legal discourses of militarized borderlands.[3] Taking the border as an intersection of geopolitical and biopolitical modalities, this paper examines three artworks that represent and occur along the U.S./Mexico border separating Arizona, U.S.A. and Sonora, Mexico. First, Daniel Leivick’s Border … Read more
ARTIST’S PROJECT: HOMELAND SECURITY (IT’S HARD TO FIND A GOOD LAMP)
by Charles Stankievech* Sept 22 – Oct 9, 2012 Marfa, Texas The electromagnetic installation, HOMELAND SECURITY (It’s hard to find a good lamp), is the latest fieldwork and publication by artist Charles Stankievech, emerging from his time spent as a researcher-in-residence at the Fieldwork: Marfa residency in the southwest border town of Marfa, Texas. It … Read more
THE READYMADE WAS ALWAYS A TROJAN HORSE: CHARLES STANKIEVECH + TIM JOHNSON IN CONVERSATION ABOUT HOMELAND SECURITY
between Charles Stankievech* and Tim Johnson* Tim Johnson: For an artist who has investigated military outpost architecture, I suspect Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation must provide an especially interesting site. When you learned that you would be coming to Marfa, did you intend to engage with this particularly mixed history, where art has come to inhabit … Read more
WHERE ART AND COMMERCE HOLD HANDS IN THE SUNSET: A PILOT STUDY OF KATERHOLZIG @ PAPAYA PLAYA—A DESIGN HOTELS™ PROJECT
by Benjamin Scheerbarth* What has the opening of a small pop-up hotel on the east coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula to do with the contemporary form of accumulation and, to borrow German sociologist Max Weber’s term, its spirit?[1] The observed marriage between art and commerce at the KaterHolzig @ Papaya Playa—A Design Hotels™ Project (hereinafter … Read more
ARTIST’S PROJECT: CONSIDERATIONS FOR ERASING/OBFUSCATING/FORGETTING A BORDER
by Broken City Lab* The border between Windsor and Detroit has not always existed the way that one encounters it today. Years ago, the border was fluid—traffic, people, and communities traveled between two cities at the edge of two countries. There was an understanding of Windsor and Detroit as one big neighborhood. Shared values, imaginations, … Read more
UNLIMITED EDITION
Each issue of Interventions features an artwork or image from a selected artist that exists as a single-page pdf, available for download as an unlimited edition. Download your copy: A Declaration of Principles *Justin A. Langlois is an artist working in integrated media and social practice based in Windsor, Ontario. He is the co-founder and Research Director of Broken City Lab.
