This article is part of our feature topic Grief. Lauryn Youden’s practice reexamines fundamental assumptions about the intersection between contemporary art and the body’s relationship to space, care and rest. Her work takes inspiration from her personal experiences navigating the medical-industrial complex and alternative healing practices, accompanied by an in-depth research methodology… Source ..read more

This article is part of our feature topic Grief. In their theory of grievability, Judith Butler posited that grievable lives⁠ — those deemed worthy of mourning upon their loss⁠ — are those initially considered valuable. Conversely, an ungrievable life is one that never held recognition as a life to begin with. Butler considered this dichotomy from the perspective of those engaged in warfare... Source ..read more

This article is part of our feature topic Grief. Pan Daijing’s solo exhibition ‘Mute’ opens this week at Munich’s Haus der Kunst. Featured prominently in the exhibition is an excerpt from the video work ‘Grief Lessons’ (2021-2023). The work combines elements of choreography, performance, sound and narrative in an elegiac exploration of the ways in which grief is enacted, performed... Source ..read more

This article is part of our feature topic Grief. Grief is a weighted and highly sensitive subject. Given time, it can also prove to be a welcome and necessary process of reckoning with the fragility of life—whether on a personal or global scale—and an opportunity for a communal coming together. Sometimes grief comes in slow and predictable waves, sometimes it hits when least expected. Source ..read more

This article is part of our feature topic Utopia. Riders of the Berlin U-Bahn have likely come face to face with the eerily mismatched eyes of a woman in an elaborate Art Deco headdress. She bears a sinister smile, as if she knows something we don’t. These eyes, of course, belong to the protagonist-turned-robot character in Fritz Lang’s 1927 film ‘Metropolis,’ which is receiving renewed interest... Source ..read more

This article is part of our feature topic Utopia. Imagine a bright future. Global social uprisings have taken place and all of our wishes have come true. There is no need for political or critical art anymore, and artists are solely focused on creating pleasant, beautiful looking artworks. What would this actually look like? The Spanish collective PSJM (Cynthia Viera and Pablo San José) fantasized... Source ..read more

This article is part of our feature topic Utopia. In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote a famous essay entitled ‘The Economic Possibilities of Our Grandchildren.’ Calculating the timelines, if you’re a geriatric millennial, “our grandchildren” more or less means you. The world of 1930 as described by Keynes—one of major technological advancement coupled with pessimism and anxiety—is... Source ..read more

This article is part of our feature topic Utopia. Sasha Amaya punctuates our conversation with seemingly effortless demonstrations of dance: a spin, a graceful drop, a particularly painterly twist of the wrist. Rather than interrupting, these motions complete the conversation—they engage concepts as movement rather than reified form. The dancer and choreographer’s sources, however... Source ..read more

This article is part of our feature topic Utopia. Housed in a three-story, former department store in Berlin, Lawrence Lek’s exhibition ‘NOX’⁠ presents a near-future speculative world, in which self-driving cars⁠—a “band of eternal wanderers, always on the move”⁠—play the lead part. In a smart city populated by sentient machines, fictional AI conglomerate Farsight Corporation handles four... Source ..read more

This article is part of our feature topic Utopia. It’s difficult to sit down and think about “utopia” right now, as the end of 2023 brought with it heightened feelings of despair about the state of our world: live-streamed violence, fractured communities, genocides and a rapidly warming planet are not exactly inspiring confidence in any kind of bright future for humanity. And yet... Source ..read more