Vor dem Eingang des Löwenbräu Areals stehen zwei Mitarbeiterinnen an zwei Stehtischen und begrüssen die Ausstellungsbesucher*innen zum Zurich Art Weekend.

Vermehrt setzen auch kulturelle Institutionen auf externe Dienstleistungen zur Organisation von Textarbeiten, Übersetzungen oder Buchhaltung und anderes mehr, um Kosten zu sparen. Solche externen Dienstleister aber verändern die Situation der Freelancer. Denn so verhandeln nicht mehr die Institutionen mit dem Freelancer, sondern der externe Dienstleister vermittelt der Institution ein Freelancer und übernimmt die Verhandlungen mit ihm. 

In this edition of Before Drones we look to the American epicenter of the pandemic: New York City. John Miller staged his first solo exhibition in 1982 at Artists Space and has since been a critical voice in the city’s artistic and discursive goings-on within the increasingly commercialized art world of the Reagan era and its politization within the «culture wars» that followed. In his multidisciplinary practice, Miller remodels the spiritual and material highs and lows and very lowest the «American Dream» has on offer, resulting in works where the fetishistic meets with analytical documentation. John Millers exhibition An Elixir of Immortality will open at the Schinkel Pavilion in Berlin on June 6 2020.

In 2003, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick published the essay «Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading. Or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is About You» as part of the anthology Touching Feeling. Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. In it, Sedgwick asks why Western critique operates mostly with paranoid readings, readings that aim to expose hidden violent structures, and suggests a «reparative» approach that focusses not only on what is being written, or said, or done but how and to what end. The text was a starting point for Geraldine Tedder’s essay «You Are Probably Completely Oblivious That This Text Actually Is About You» and will kick off a series of texts in line with Sedgwick’s thinking as to what it might or might not mean to read and write «reparatively».

In «Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading,» Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick takes to task Western critique for its tendency to be based on, even be synonymous with, suspicion. She characterizes it as foremost aiming to expose, believing – as does paranoia – that such an exposure will protect it from threat. Sedgwick laments the loss of other affective modes in theory that might aim to repair. She observes that these often aren’t taken seriously, are seen as naïve or complaisant. In her essay, Sedgwick attempts to expose (paradoxically, she herself admits) paranoia, to describe and understand its mechanisms, and asks what a critique would look like that would turn around the logic of the sentence: «Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean you don’t have enemies» (based on a quote by Henry Kissinger) to «Just because you have enemies, doesn’t mean you have to be paranoid». I was intrigued by the notion Sedgwick names «reparative reading,» a concept that remains obscure in her text, but involves a turn away from protocols in critique such as maintaining an «objective» distance, subsuming phenomena under one term or rehashing well-established theories. The text resonated with questions I had around the politics of positioning oneself – for, alongside, against another, perhaps even against oneself – in critical practices such as writing.

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Before Drones beginnen wir mit Mathis Altmann. In Altmanns cyber-barocken Objekten welche oft architektonische Modelle, Entwürfe für Kunst im öffentlichen Raum oder des privaten Sektors suggerieren und travestieren, verdichten sich polare Elemente und Stile: digitales und analoges, Fortschritt und Dekadenz, überbordende Fassaden und marodes Fundament die allesamt auf eine pathologisch widersprüchliche Gegenwart zu reagieren scheinen. Altmann zeigte seine Arbeiten zuletzt bei Freedman Fitzpatrick, Paris; Luma Foundation, Zürich; Swiss Institute, New York und wird im Herbst dieses Jahres in der Gruppenausstellung Macht! Licht! im Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg zu sehen sein.

Einige Ereignisse werfen lange Schatten. Lang sind sie vorüber – und doch ahnt man ihre Gegenwart, besonders rückblickend. Welche Ereignisse diesem Jahr Schatten spenden könnten, orakelt die fünfte Ausgabe der Kolumne «Pick a Piece» anhand der Ausstellung The Premise of a Better Life des Amerikaners Sam Pulitzer (*1984) im Kunsthaus Glarus, die am ersten Januar 2020 endete. Gleichzeitig steht die Kolumne im Schatten ihrer eigenen Erstausgabe: dem «Pick a Piece»-Jahresrückblick auf Sam Pulitzers Soloshow Shadow of the Problem as Such in der Galerie Francesca Pia in Zürich vor zwei Jahren. 

When will ‹reality› stabilize again? Checking the incoming Covid-19 news, there is little doubt the virus has co-opted our daily routines for now. Here are some thoughts on dreams, consciousness, the virus.