Time for our annual end of year highlights. Chosen by our regular writers, contributing editors and ourselves, the best and the memorable of 2014 in art and culture. First up, regular writer Elvia Wilk.
Last year 1.2 billion photos were uploaded and shared every day. By May this year, when Mary Meeker, a former Wall Street analyst turned internet sage, released her annual internet report, the number of daily image uploads and shares was already at 1.8 billion. What is the role of the solitary image now? How does one engage a zeitgeist defined by superabundance and ceaseless accumulation, rather than singularity and pause? What to do: retreat or dive headfirst into the maelstrom? I did a bit of both.
A selection of new, previously unpublished work by leading poets: John Ashbery, Charles Bernstein, Anselm Berrigan, Paul Chan, Marcella Durand, Alan Gilbert, Ann Lauterbach, Eileen Myles, Jake Pam Dick, Frances Richard, Lytle Shaw, Mónica de la Torre, Anne Waldman, Matvei Yankelevich and John Yau.
For this special section, we invited Jeremy Sigler to choose new work by poets from different generations and sensibilities, whose writing is influenced, in one way or another, by the visual arts. All live and work in the US; some write poetry full-time; many are critics, activists and educators; yet others are artists.
Die meist doch eher leidige Frage, inwiefern Mode Kunst ist, oder sein kann, hat sich 2013 anscheinend mit besonderer Dringlichkeit gestellt. Warum sonst gab es in diesem Jahr zig Ausstellungen und Buchveröffentlichungen zum Thema? Auch auf den Laufstegen war Kunst omnipräsent, der Bezugspunkt war vor allem: Malerei. In etlichen 2014er-Kollektionen wird Stoff zur Leinwand und bekleckst, besprüht, bepinselt. Ein Rückblick auf die "canvas collections" des ausgehenden/kommenden Jahres.
New Age, Spirituelle Musik, Ambient-Sounds: 2013 war, was die Musik anging, die ich hörte, ein Jahr der Immersion. Da waren die entrückten Heimorgel-Gospels von Otis G. Johnson auf dem umwerfend betitelten Album ‚Everything’ – „God is Love“ von 1978 (mit den zum Gebet gefalteten Händen auf dem Cover, die – als bereinigte Illustrator-Wiedergänger – auch auf Dean Blunts The Redeemer auftauchten);
After being asked to write this list it slowly started to dawn on me none of the films I enjoyed this year were released in 2013 and the two books I most wanted to recommend – Oxana Timofeeva’s History of Animals: An Essay on Negativity, Immanence and Freedom (Jan van Eyck Academie) and Hito Steyerl’s The Wretched of the Screen (Sternberg Press) – both turned out to have been published in 2012. So there, I just smuggled them in anyway, but promise I will stick to the rules from now on …
