Issue 149
September 2012

dOCUMENTA (13): Alex Farquharson and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie grapple with the complexities of an exhibition that incorporates more than 300 participants on multiple sites which extend beyond Kassel to Alexandria/Cairo, Banff and Kabul.

‘Questions and Answers’: Suzanne Lacy talks to Jennifer Higgie about the collaborations, videos and large-scale performances that she has created over the past 40 years. ‘

‘Look into the Camera’: Since the early 1960s Peter Watkins has explored film’s potential as a medium of communication and catharsis for actors and audiences alike. Jonty Claypole visits the director and the cast of his 1974 film Edvard Munch.

‘Never Enough’: On the occasion of David France’s new documentary How to Survive a Plague and a recent retrospective at New York University’s 80WSE gallery, writer Jennifer Kabat looks back at the AIDS activism of ACT UP and Gran Fury in the late 1980s and early ’90s and finds a template for the future.

From this issue

Since the early 1960s, Peter Watkins has explored film’s potential as a medium of communication and catharsis 

BY Jonty Claypole |

Kateřina Šedá’s projects question the pros and cons of an artistic practice that purports to be for the good of its participants

BY Christy Lange |

Redmond Entwistle on the making of Walk-Through (2012), a film about Michael Asher’s ‘Post-Studio’ class at CalArts.

BY Mike Sperlinger |

Melancholy and entropy haunt the French artist’s films and photographs

Mark Godfrey travelled to four cities to gain a deeper understanding of Theaster Gates's intermingling of art with urban regeneration

BY Mark Godfrey |

Bikesploitation and art

BY Dan Fox |

Newsrooms, agitprop theatre and the‘living newspaper'

BY Agnieszka Gratza |

Alex Farquharson and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie grapple with the complexities of dOCUMENTA (13)

A survey of recently founded artist-run art academies and education programmes

BY Sam Thorne |

How a monumental ruin is turned into gravel, in the Brazilian artist’s show ‘Dois Reais’ (Two Reals, 2012)

BY Jörg Heiser |

In an ongoing series, frieze asks an artist, curator or writer to list the books that have influenced them

BY Katerina Gregos |

For 40 years, Suzanne Lacy has worked collaboratively to create installations, videos and large-scale performances in response to social themes and urban issues

An exclusive extract from Jean-Philippe Obu-Stevenson's memoir of a life in art and politics

What constitutes political art?

BY Lynne Tillman |

Spectatorship, fatigue and addiction

BY Jennifer Allen |

The Aztec imagery and digital soundworld of Mexican producer Javier Estrada

BY Jace Clayton |

Imagination, football and the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe

BY Sean O'Toole |

Performance art in Burma

BY Elizabeth Rush |

What is art for? Perhaps it’s one of the few things left that allows us to declare that we don’t fit the given standards.

BY Renata Lucas |

AIDS activism now and then – 25 years of ACT UP and Gran Fury

BY Jennifer Kabat |

Three new publications on socially engaged art by Claire Bishop, Creative Time and Pablo Helguera

BY Ana Teixeira Pinto |

Art’s disputed relationship to activism

BY Jennifer Higgie |