Unbidden Tongues #4: Oral Informants draws on the work of Australia social historian Janet McCalman who, in 1998, published a comprehensive history of the Melbourne Women’s Hospital. Written through the medical records of the women who were at one time or another the hospital’s temporary residents, McCalman’s account draws on a vast archive of 14,000 gynaecology records and over 70,000 midwifery records to build the hospital’s history through the administrative documents that litter its archive. Composed of an article written by McCalman in 1999 as well as a case file of original nursing notes, Oral Informants presents the process of penning a (medical) history lesson uniquely based in the oral testimony of women.

Produced on the occasion of Mode and Mode issue 8 Rogue which is assembled around the modernist satirical magazine Rogue (1915–1916) with newly commissioned texts by Astrid Lorange, Femke de Vries, Matthew Linde, Ulrich Lehmann, Isabelle Sully, Yair Oelbaum, Katherine Bernard and Rowan McNaught.

The issue produces a conceptual mirror in the form of a split screen: on the left, a facsimile of the first issue of Rogue, published in March 1915, and on the right, Mode and Mode. This collective enquiry into Rogue not only recirculates and reconsiders this distinctive project in the context a radically different scene of art, fashion and poetry of the present day.

You can read the issue online here.

Consisting of an internal report written by conceptual artist and philosopher Adrian Piper in 1998, Necessary Questions takes Wellesley College, Massachusetts—where she was then on staff—as a case study in institutional racism and neglect. As such, the report could be read simply as an administrative document, though one drenched in meticulously clear advice that could still be, despite being written twenty-three years ago, taken up on a glaringly universal level. Yet the role it went on to play in Piper’s life proves it’s not just a context-specific document, but an all-too-real example of exactly what it stood against: the ways in which the langue of protocol and the false façade of civility are utilised as tactics to ensure that one stays in their place.

It is the third title from Unbidden Tongues, a series edited by Isabelle Sully that focuses on previously produced yet relatively uncirculated work by cultural practitioners busy with questions surrounding civility and civic life—particularly so in relation to language.

Kunstverein’s in-house magazine is a cross between an academic journal and a darts club newsletter. Each issue contains a limited amount of contributions that vary in length according to the subject matter at hand. The remit of ‘Ginger&Piss’​ is simple: to provide a platform for candid critique but at the same time allow the author to stay hidden. Therefore, each contributor writes under a pseudonym. This issue takes the topic of ‘audience’ as its starting point and seeks to serve two aims: on the one hand it provides unfabricated answers to questions about who Kunstverein’s audience really is (or is not, yet!) via an online survey developed by the editors, Reinier Klok and Isabelle Sully, and on the other it attempts to bring to the surface the many factors that can complicate statistical reasoning in the first place.

Launch token produced on the occasion of the launch of the Ginger&Piss #5: Audience.

Kunstverein’s in-house magazine is a cross between an academic journal and a darts club newsletter. Each issue contains a limited amount of contributions that vary in length according to the subject matter at hand. The remit of ‘Ginger&Piss’​ is simple: to provide a platform for candid critique but at the same time allow the author to stay hidden. Therefore, each contributor writes under a pseudonym.

Produced on the occasion of Sway by Andrew Long held at TCB art inc., Melbourne, 15 April–2 May, 2015. Text by Isabelle Sully and Andrew Long, with photographs by Andrew Read. Designed by Robert Milne.