Portfolios
Kerstin Brätsch, James Howard, Alex Klein, Noah Sheldon
The artist of today is a titan of microindustry. He employs a lot of people, for an artist.
PR
Sidney Falco
If you can’t master the work, the texts, the history (and who could?), you can at least know the players, the events, the locales, and the scene—each of which change with the speed and narcotic dependability of a soap opera, smoothing out the disconcerting transformations of art itself.
The End of Carnality Is the Beginning of Facebook
Christopher Hsu
As our culture dwindled, the world could conceivably witness the rebirth of ritual on a vast scale and see the original question, the problem of death, insoluble by technology as by syllogism, restored to its position at the aesthetic center of civilization. The outsized fear of a violent end to life that is a symptom of a sex-based culture would then diminish accordingly, as would all manner of desperate contriving to banish the thought of it. The solution of the problem of sex thus augurs the return of death to life.
Which brings us to Facebook, the website.
Sculpture in the Expended Field
Jessica Slaven
Rodents, in case you didn’t know, produce cheeky, semi-racist graffiti, knock holes in walls, and sport-piss all over the place. They also enjoy concerts by Gang Gang Dance.
You Dirty, Worthless Slut
Jen Schwarting
Perhaps a man who preyed upon women would get kicked out of the art world, but what would his work be parodying, anyway?
Russia
Keith Gessen
When Stephen Boykewich suggested that Putin for all his faults had at least begun to fight corruption and stabilize the economy, Plutser-Sarno went on the attack. “What exactly does Putin do?” he demanded. Then, looking around the café for listening devices, he added: “I mean, aside from making things better. We all know he makes things better. Did you hear that, Mr. Putin? But aside from that,” turning back to us, “what does he actually do?”
Camera Vacua
David Giles
One gets the impression that in all of these spaces things could go on as they habitually do were it not for one fairly obvious detail: all the missing people. And they are missing. They’re never just in the other room or out of town carrying on as usual. If the space isn’t already in a state of visible decay, then there are other, more subtle signs that things have come, resoundingly and permanently, to an end.
WeTube
Mark Greif
The biggest mistake you could make about YouTube would be accepting the idea that it allows individuals to make television. Television remains a capital-intensive and employee-intensive medium. It has ceded no ground.
Yet Inside I Was Burning. Burning!
Naomi Fry
Looking down, you see something else: at the foot of the bookcase stands a bric-a-brac sculpture, its black pedestal stocky like a book’s spine, sporting hot pink block letters—GET THE FUCK OFF MY BED—whose implied scream is undercut by a toneless lack of punctuation, as if to say: I might mean this or not, depending what my next line is…
ABCDELEUZE
Andrew Berardini
The culture industry has evolved to the point where even informal spaces like bars have been fully professionalized: committed to networking and other catastrophic encounters.
Leaving Design
Loretta Staples
My mother also brought with her a particular gesture and pose: often sitting quietly, her head tilted slightly, hand to the side of her face, chin cupped in palm. Years later, in an art history class in college, I learned this posture had a name: lament.
War-Zone Tourism
Gregory Warner
Seeking help, we follow the Lonely Planet map to the Afghan Tourism Office, which turns out to be a sort of two-room corrugated tin shack perched on the roof of a government building. Inside, we find five men arranged among dented metal office furniture. The men smile at us, slightly alarmed. “Salaam Aleikhum,” I say, shaking each of their hands in turn. “Do you have any pamphlets?”