Third Text, 153: Actually Existing Artworlds of Socialism (2018)

“The tensions between actual and ideal versions of socialism elucidated by East German theorist Rudolf Bahro in 1977 are taken as a starting point for reconsidering East European art from the radical effervescence of the 1960s to the post-utopian twilight of the late 1970s. The special issue is premised on the concept that artistic life in Eastern Europe was profoundly shaped by the structures, conventions and workings of the overarching system, with artists and critics compelled to negotiate its productive contradictions. It examines the quotidian functioning of art scenes across the region that entailed the drawing up of tacit compromises and maintenance of calculated ambiguities in relations between party authorities and artists. Ultimately it was the latent and unrealised promise of actually existing socialism as much as its demonstrative failings that marked a crucial difference in the attitude of East European artists to the utopian reverberations of the era.”

With texts by Maja Fowkes & Reuben Fowkes, Tomáš Pospiszyl, Tomasz Załuski, Zsuzsa László, Daniel Grúň, Candice M Hamelin, Hana Buddeus, Alina Șerban, Raino Isto, Sonja Simonyi, Marko Ilić, and Armin Medosch.

Edited by Reuben Fowkes
Publisher Routledge, July 2018
ISSN 0952-8822
194 pages

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A Wild Ass Beyond: ApocalypseRN (2018)

“‘Everyone contains a history of contamination; purity is not an option.’

In the event of disaster, we, the people who have always been surviving, will simply continue to survive. We have learned skills you wouldn’t believe, enduring under police states. We refine trauma into gold and use exile as jet propellant.

Yet we lack a vision of our lives past survival. What will we do when we head “back to the land” that was never ours? We do not see ourselves in the paranoiac manuals of preppers, in minimalist lifestyle retreats, in the nativist isolationism of militiamen.

We do not want to repeat these dreams of being the center, forever tyrants over little kingdoms. In this beyond, we will contaminate one another. We first learn from the past, building lookouts to keep our homes from burning.

We then seek an unruly communion. New languages, icons, guides, rituals, spun and fired beneath a twilight canopy of fungi. We claim a gorgeous, baroque maximalism, a future that sounds, looks, and feels like our innermost thoughts.”

Made by American Artist, Caitlin Cherry, Nora N. Khan and Sondra Perry
Published in New York, October 2018
[24] pages

Exh. reviews: Alex A. Jones (The Brooklyn Rail, 2018), Che Gosseett (The Brooklyn Rail, 2018).

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Unbag, 1-4 (2017-2019)

“unbag is a semi-annual magazine that promotes critical engagement with contemporary art and politics. Commissioning artists, writers, and thinkers who work outside of mainstream discourses, unbag functions as a space to explore ideas through discussion and exchange.”

Edited by American Artist (1), Aaron Cooper (1-3), Andy Wentz (1), Charlie Markbreiter (2), Natalia Tuero Germán (2-3), and Mylo Mendez (3)
Publisher unbag, New York, 2017-2019
ISSN 2572-2786
c.98 pages per issue

Issue 1: Metis (May 2017, HTML)
Issue 2: End (Jan 2018, HTML)
Issue 3: Reverie (Sep 2018, HTML)
Issue 4: In Tension (Sep 2019, HTML, added on 2020-6-8)