Books

Eds. Maria Hlavajova, Sven Lütticken and Jill Winder (BAK, Utrecht, and post editions, Rotterdam, 2009)

Ed. Tom McDonough (Verso, London, 2009)

Sorry to hear that Mark Sladen is to leave the ICA. Sladen has been the ICA’s Director of Exhibitions since the beginning of 2007, and has been responsible for solo shows from Enrico David, Rosalind Nashashibi, Loris Gréaud and Billy Childish (which is currently showing), and group shows including ‘Poor.Old.Tired.Horse’, ‘Double Agent’ and ‘Nought to Sixty’, an ambitious survey of emerging artists in the UK.

According to yesterday’s press release: ‘His position has been made redundant within a review of the ICA’s organisational structure’ – David Thorp, who has been working with the institution as an external consultant since last year, will be advising on the ICA’s artistic programme until further notice.

According to a piece just posted by Charlotte Higgins on the Guardian website, Sladen told bosses that he would only reapply for his position if the ICA’s director, Ekow Eshun, resigned. ICA staff have apparently taken a vote of no confidence in the director. According to an unnamed staff member: ‘The results of the vote were suppressed, and whatever the official line on this, this is manipulation. Ekow Eshun made it clear that to reveal the results of the vote would be an act of sabotage, that the ICA would suffer from such information being out there.’

This restructuring is unfortunately timed, given that the ICA has just received 1.2 million from Sustain, an emergency fund organized by Arts Council England to help arts organisations affected by the recession. For more, read JJ Charlesworth’s detailed (and prescient) analysis of the ICA’s finances, posted on the Mute website three weeks ago.

We wish Sladen all the best with future projects.

René Girard (Michigan State University Press, 2009)

Arthur C. Danto (Yale University Press, 2009)

Stephen T. Asma (Oxford University Press, 2009)

Literary highlights of 2009, a poetry scandal, the Man Booker International Prize, artists’ writings and a new study on Robert Ryman

Charlotte Klonk (Yale University Press, 2009)

David Bennewith (ed.) (Clouds, Jan van Eyck Academie and Colophon, Auckland and Maastricht, 2009)

‘The Year of the Flood’ captures very well the way in which climate catastrophe is both inevitable and impossible for us think about

(Faber & Faber, London, 2009)

Sophie Richard (Ridinghouse, London, 2009)

David Leatherbarrow (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009)

Paul Smith (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2009)

While Germany wakes up this Monday to a new government, Berlin’s art scene – presumably – wakes up to a big hangover after a crazily busy art week in the city. When last Thursday mayor Klaus Wowereit participated in a panel discussion entitled ‘Does Berlin need a Kunsthalle?’ at Hamburger Bahnhof Museum (coinciding with myriad art events in Berlin, including the art fair, ‘art berlin contemporary’, and tonnes of gallery openings), he confirmed his intention to build one. But whether he’ll still be concerned with this question in the near future is the big question after yesterday’s general election in Germany. His party, the Social Democrats, lost by a landslide, and in Berlin – where Wowereit still had a comparatively strong standing – it didn’t fare much better.

Of course there are bigger questions now, with a coalition of Merkel’s conservatives and the liberal party now in power. But in any case Wowereit’s coalition partner in the Berlin senate, the leftist Die Linke, was significantly strengthened, and they don’t favour a Kunsthalle at all, playing it off against other budgetary commitments. On top of that, given the sorry state of the SPD, it might well happen that Wowereit will turn to bigger tasks at the head of the party.

Given that the plan for a Kunsthalle still seems written in the stars more than anywhere else, there seemed to be one agreement though between most of the panellists – including artists Monica Bonvicini, Olafur Eliasson and art critic Niklas Maak of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung – that a new building, rather than using an existing structure, is the way forward, favouring a more adventurous take on contemporary architecture (and the Humboldthafen, a spot just across from Hamburger Bahnhof, right next to the central train station). The question is whether Maak’s argument against pompous landmark gestures à la the Guggenheim Bilbao, favouring instead structures actually suiting the needs of art (which was also confirmed by Bonvicini and Eliasson), really registered with Wowereit, who hasn’t shown much interest to date in listening to artists or art critics. After the change in the political landscape, this might now happen, in order to boost credibility – or the project will get axed all together.

Meanwhile the Temporäre Kunsthalle – a white cube box built by Viennese architect Adolf Krischanitz – attempts a relaunch after months of struggle. The structure – temporarily established last year in the spot where the Hohenzollern palace is planned to be rebuilt in coming years, and financed almost entirely by one patron, Dieter Rosenkranz – had been used for a string of respectable solo presentations by artists such as Simon Starling or Candice Breitz; but what the programme lacked was a real sense of direction. Maybe that was because it didn’t have a proper director who actually would have some surprising ideas and create a sense of coherence. Instead it had a board of too many advising curators. Now it seems to do better without that board, though still without a proper director; in any case, the concept of asking artists to curate shows could prove more rewarding, starting with a nicely odd show entitled ‘Scorpio’s Garden’ by Danish artist Kirstine Roepstorff that makes good spatial use of sculptural works by Julian Göthe or Isa Genzken (to be followed by a show curated by Karin Sander). The outside skin of the building also has been used in a simple, but effective way by Bettina Pousttchi who turned it into a black-and-white, ghostly distorted Echo of the Palace of the Republic demolished not so long ago, right next to the spot.

(pt. 2 soon, followed by a slightly delayed write-up of recent art events in Stockholm)

The publication of an unfinished novel by Vladimir Nabokov prompts a reflection on the aesthetic possibilities of the literary vanishing act

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

Steven Shaviro (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2009) / Graham Harman (Re.Press, Melbourne, 2009)

Giorgio Agamben, trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella (Stanford University Press, 2009)

The Invisible Committee (Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, 2009)