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A coffin to bury the statues of the ­ancestors
A coffin to bury the  statues of the ­ancestors

Clémentine Deliss

The Repatriation of the White Cube

I was initially slightly sceptical of the ramifications and undertones of Renzo Martens’ project in central Congo. But as I found out on a recent visit to Lusanga in DRC, it is precisely the complexity and radical ambiguity of the enterprise that provides it with both artistic as well as socio-economic and political relevance. The work operates across several registers, each with its own context and syntax, be it within farming or art. What really convinces me is the equity...
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About ‘how we treat the others’

Artur Zmijewski

About ‘how we treat the others’

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To end GOD’S JUDGEMENT
To end GOD’S JUDGEMENT

Antonin Artaud, Stephen Barber (ed.)

Radio Works: 1946–48

Artaud’s work is performative in the sense that it never simply describes, but actively produces the events it enacts. As Austin characterises performative language, ‘the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action’.3 Artaud’s work, performed correctly, is magical, finding its power in ritualistic chanting. Intonation is key to this, recalling what he wrote about metaphysical language in The ­Theatre and its Double, where the aim is ‘to deal with intonations in an absolutely concrete manner, restoring their...
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Blood!

Ines Kleesattel

Blood!

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Zoran Terzić

Everything new is a pose in the alcoves of capital

In the late nineteenth century Alfred Jarry created a prototype of the modern wannabe in his pot-bellied Père Ubu, a figure that raises entitlement to a high art. Ubu doesn’t want to be king; others urge him to it. But he is also the others. And when he does become king, CEO, or US president, he doesn’t know what it means, or if it means anything at all. He just states his claim. And so he shimmies from statement to power. And having obtained power, Ubu decerebrates the world, exposing the grounds for groundlessness, to paraphrase Ortega y Gasset. Ubu is a tautomaniac, that is, he can be explained in his own terms and is thus always in the right (being in the right is all he is). He needs no proof, but on the contrary wants “to turn the absurd into the highest power of thought” (Deleuze & Guattari)....

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