Parkett No. 97, Fall 2015

Andrea Buttner, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Camille Henrot, Hito SteyerlWide-ranging dimensions are covered in this volume of Parkett not only geographically but also anthropologically. The contributions move with astonishing ease between macro and micro dimensions and between the extremes of the hyper-digital and the archaic-analog. In this respect, they revisit the kind of universalism, all but forgotten in recent decades, that has a frequently anthropological approach. In the work of Andrea Buttner, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Camille Henrot, and Hito Steyerl, we find not only variations on the narrative of creation but also exemplary reviews of everyday culture in a hearty and densely interrelated melange of people, animals, objects, plants, and minerals.What begins on our cover as a striking kaleidoscope of feline and human eyes—it is a filmstill from Camille Henrot’s LA GROSSE FATIGUE (2013)—is followed inside the magazine by images that are all the more wondrous for their appearance of normality. In her audaciously frivolous project of illustrating Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Andrea Buttner deliberately provokes a clash between image and text, for that philosophical monument is, in fact, intrinsically “visual.” The polarization of the social classes and their specific “experience of objects” is Abraham Cruzvillegas’ point of departure for his installations while the object in Hito Steyerl’s work is the artist herself: vanishing point of an abandoned subject as the consequence of an economically globalized HD reality. Also in this issue an insert by Kilian Ruthemann.Table of ContentAbsolute Otherness : On Markus Dobeli’s Paintings by Ory DessauAndrea ButtnerAndrea Buttner’s Little, Queer Things by Julia Bryan-WilsonAndrea Buttner’s Aesthetics by Christoph MenkeAndrea Buttner: The Woodcut Revisited by Aram MoshayediAbraham CruzvillegasThe Berlin Wall by Tom McDonoughIntercontinental Missive by Doryun ChongOutside, But Very Close, War Rages by Aline HernandezCamille HenrotCargo, Kago, and Culture by Joshua A. BellThe Absent Center: Camille Henrot’s Films between Postcolonialism and Digital Postivism by Diedrich DiederichsenScreen Capture by D. Graham BurnettHito SteyerlAfter Effects by Ed HalterSkimming Her by Brian DroitcourLiving Image, Feeling Dead: Hito Steyerl in Hito Steyerl by Linda Stupart Kilian Ruthemann, InsertTeresa Hubbard & Alexander Birchler, Les Infos du Paradis by Konrad Bitterli«Situations» Fotomuseum Winterthur by Mark WelzelFounded in 1984, Parkett has long been an important source of literature on international contemporary art. Each biannual issue is a collaboration with four artists, in which their work is explored in richly illustrated essays by leading writers and critics. The artists also create exclusive limited editions, available to Parkett readers. Recent artists featured in Parkett include Jeremy Deller, Wael Shawky, Dayanita Singh and Rosemarie Trockel (no. 95); Tauba Auerbach, Urs Fischer, Cyprien Gaillard, Ragnar Kjartansson and Shirana Shahbazi (94); and Valentin Carron, Frances Stark, Adrian Villar Rojas and Danh Vo (93). Additional texts have focused on the role of robots in contemporary art (95), the challenges of exhibiting performance art (95) and the effects of new technologies and social media on the live arts (94).