Riffing off the title, this volume includes an interview with Carolyn Lazard—an artist whose conceptual and often spare videos, sculptures, installations, and performances explore the full amplitude of relation—by Catherine Damman, plus a feature on New York-based contemporary artist Tishan Hsu, whose practice examines the “embodiment of technology”, and contributions by time-based media artist Silvia Kolbowski, for whom political resistance, the unconscious, and structures of spectatorship are a central concern of all her projects; choreographer and dancer Yvonne Rainer; and science fiction author Octavia Butler. Edited with Kathrin Bentele, Anna Gritz, and Ghislaine Leung. Including the work of Lutz Bacher, stanley brouwn, Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda, Hanne Darboven, Jef Geys, Tishan Hsu, Pope L., Louise Lawler, Carolyn Lazard, Ghislaine Leung, Lee Lozano, Henrik Olesen, Sarah Rapson, Margaret Raspé, Ketty La Rocca, Sturtevant, Martin Wong and Octavia E. Butler.
This book is a three-part report on the long-term collaboration between artist Pope.L and curator Dieter Roelstraete which revolves around issues of connectedness, home, and migration, while addressing art’s relationship to knowledge.
Begun in spring 2016 with an invitation, extended to the artist by Roelstraete and his colleagues Monika Szewczyk and Adam Szymczyk, to participate in the fourteenth edition of documenta, Pope.L’s contribution took on the guise of an immersive, seemingly omnipresent sound installation titled Whispering Campaign, consisting of thousands of hours of whispered content—addressing nationhood and borders—broadcast throughout Athens and Kassel using both speakers and live “whisperers.”
In his catalogue essay, curator Anthony Huberman explains that the works in this exhibition ‘reflect on what it could mean to contest the regime of the machine’. That is, they question the worship of usefulness in modern scientific civilisation, which is refused or even ridiculed by each piece on show. It’s a strong concept, and potentially extends to how the works are placed in the labyrinthine space of the Secession. If the point is to produce friction, then the disorganisation of Other Mechanisms—the inability of its parts to add up to a coherent whole—is a paradoxical form of success.
Concept: Anthony Huberman. Texts: Jennifer Alexander, Franco Berardi, Benjamin H. Bratton, Gilles Châtelet, Gilles Deleuze, Keller Easterling, Vilém Flusser, Sigfried Gideon, Martin Heidegger, Anthony Huberman, K.G. Hultén, Maurizio Lazzarato, Pamela Lee, Les Levine, Jean-François Lyotard, Robert King Merton, Meredith Meredith, Lewis Mumford, Gerald Raunig, Nishant Shah, Robert Snowden, Joseph Vogl. Images: Zarouhie Abdalian, Lutz Bacher, Nairy Baghramian, Eva Barto, Patricia L. Boyd, Nina Canell & Robin Watkins, Jay DeFeo, Trisha Donnelly, Harun Farocki, Howard Fried, Jacob Kassay, Garry Neill Kennedy, Frederick Kiesler, Pope.L, Louise Lawler, Sam Lewitt, Park McArthur, Jean-Luc Moulène, Cameron Rowland, Sturtevant, Danh Vo.
Published on the occasion of Mechanisms, a group exhibition at CCA Wattis Institute (October 12, 2017 to February 24, 2018). It includes an essay by curator Anthony Huberman as well as contributions from artists Zarouhie Abdalian, Terry Atkinson, Lutz Bacher, Eva Barto, Neil Beloufa, Patricia L. Boyd, Jay DeFeo, Harun Farocki, Richard Hamilton, Aaron Flint Jamison, Jacob Kassay, Garry Neill Kennedy, Louise Lawler, Park McArthur, Jean-Luc Moulène, William Pope.L, Charlotte Posensenke, Cameron Rowland, and Danh Vo. Trisha Donnelly designed the cover.
Instead of documenting the exhibition, the catalogue reflects and expands on some of its core ideas. Designed by Scott Ponik and Julie Peeters, the book’s fabrication makes use of different printing techniques and “machines,” including an offset printer, a letterpress, and thermography, as well as a wide range of natural and synthetic paper stocks. Contributions by each of the exhibiting artists range from photo essays, theoretical essays, video transcripts and stills, interviews, and works designed especially for the page.