Commentaries - November 2011

M/E/A/N/I/N/G 25th Anniversary Edition

full web issue and pdf link here

This is an unusual moment of global economic crisis, failure of capitalism and of progressive political movements, a moment of political impasse, and of generational shift, following upon a series of traumatic political events and a decade of war. Methods of communication have changed since we began our project 25 years ago and concepts of privacy and individuality seem to be in a process of radical transformation.
 
Our 25th anniversary issue centers around two themes: the impact of public trauma on art and art critical practice, and the nature of privacy for the artist or critic working in the age of social networking and global spectacle.

The first issue of M/E/A/N/I/N/G: A Journal of Contemporary Art Issues, was published in December 1986. We published 20 issues biannually over ten years. In 2000, M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings, Theory, and Criticism was published by Duke University Press. In 2002 we began to publish M/E/A/N/I/N/G Online and have published four previous online issues. The M/E/A/N/I/N/G archive from 1986 to 2002 is in the collection of the Beinecke Library at Yale University.
 
To address our themes in this online issue, we invited a wide spectrum of artists, art historians, and poets, some who had written for our journal before and many new artists and writers whose work we have encountered in recent years. We are proud to continue our commitment to maintaining an open, non-profit space for independent writing about art.

We are honored to publish the responses we have received, people really wrote what they wanted, what they felt, each very individually, many clearly inspired and energized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began September 17th in Lower Manhattan and has rapidly sent a wave of optimism around the world.
 
Susan Bee and Mira Schor
New York City, November 18 2011

Wormwood

“WORM WOULD BITE-CHEW” begins the wording on the oft-eccentric jacket of an issue of the Wormwood Review, edited by the pharmacologist Marvin Malone for 30 years from 1960 to 1990. On my 1960 blog I took a breezy foray into Malone and the mag's founding.

Nazis in the bookstores, 1960

This drawing illustrates an article published in a 1960 issue of the New York Times about the republication that year of Mein Kampf and the spate just then of books about the Nazis. What’s a bookstore shopper to do?

John Waters Critique, George Kuchar Tribute, Ryan Trecartin Parody

new Felix Bernstein video

Felix between John Waters and George Kuchar

Bard College © student Felix Bernstein stars as YouTube Professor Felix Bernstein. Followed by a Post Script, Branching off on the aforementioned Homosexual Artists: An Overly Generalized and Reductive Philisophical Theory about Everything. Ryan Trecartin Played By and Animated by Gabe Rubin. (Ben Coonley homage.)

Ashbery on memory and aging

Here's an audio clip of John Ashbery talking about memory and old age. (And here's the context for that statement.)