The “Free-floating” Srinagar Biennale explores Kashmiri artists’ fractured sense of place through memory, nostalgia, loss and national belonging. Carlson delves into how the Srinagar Biennale adopts an innovative and free-flowing format that allows the Kashmiri community to assert a new visual narrative through a ‘rhizomatic’ approach by engaging viewers in a sensorial experience rather than a visual one.

Is it possible to grasp a large-scale group exhibition based on a single artwork? This is the question posed by curator and critic Julia Moritz in her series of experimental reviews titled “Pick a Piece.” To Moritz, responding to the mushrooming of mega-exhibitions with the sturdy format of the art review means radical choice: to (en)counter the explosion of exhibitions with the implosion of inspection, with the selection of just one piece – this time from this summer’s art fairs and biennials in Basel, Palermo, and Berlin.

“A Cinder Block Falling on Concrete” consists of sounds and stories from Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Earwitness Inventory, a personal library of sound effects related to the testimony of earwitnesses in criminal investigations. The objects in Earwitness Inventory are derived from interviews that Abu Hamdan has conducted with earwitnesses, as part of his work as a “private ear,” as well as transcripts from trials across the globe. (Multiple entries concern the reconstruction of Syria’s Saydnaya prison and the experiences of detainees, which Abu Hamdan undertook with the London-based research agency Forensic Architecture and Amnesty International from 2015 to 2017.) The library ...

A Euro is a Euro is a Euro: Fieldwork in European Realism appears online in issue 2 of Fictional Journal and is reproduced in the Propaganda pdf document. As a singular embodiment of matter and representation, the Euro-skulptur is as abstract as money, as tangible as cash. An essay and animations analyse the sculpture as a material symbol of the European Union. Euro cash is European Realism, it is a representation of things as they actually are, it is the sincere, un-idealised rendition of contemporary life in the EU. we normally look at architecture, or more broadly at the built environment, as the interface ...

In April, the Kunstmuseum Basel opened its new building. More recently, the Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur followed suit, and in Zürich construction on the extension of the Kunsthaus is well underway. These building projects suggest long-term confidence in publicly funded art museums. But what understanding of “public” is conveyed here? An inspection in Basel.

It has been a long time since as many people took to the streets in the cause of feminism as did for the Women’s March on Washington. Protesters wore the hand-knitted pussyhats in such large numbers that they colored the crowds pink. The hats became a striking visual signature feature of the protest against the Trump administration. They stand for a feminism that has majority appeal, albeit with questionable references.

“How do fictions give rise to nations and nationalities? How do they come to be understood as real and fundamental to identity?” An essay on fictional homelands, Potemkin nations, and wonders of the industrial world.

In digitized, interconnected, post- and trans-human times, judgment becomes ‘justment.’ Once online, criticism diffuses into the channels of the social networks, it is commented on, ironized, parodied, corrected. Individual criticism has turned into dividual criticism. A response to Engaged Art Criticism — 7 Propositions by Ines Kleesattel and Pablo Müller.

On February 13, an anonymous petition called for the reinstatement of Beatrix Ruf as director of the Stedelijk Museum. The petition comes at a time when further investigations into the affair have not yet yielded any results that could shed some light on the current level of autonomy of public institutions in general—an issue that, in fact, begs debate.

Innovation. Meritocracy. The possibility of overnight success. What’s not to love about Silicon Valley? These days, it’s hard to be unambiguously optimistic about the growth-at-all-costs ethos of the tech industry. Public opinion is souring in the wake of revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Theranos, and the workplace conditions of Amazon workers or Uber drivers. It’s becoming clear that the tech industry’s promised “innovation” is neither sustainable nor always desirable. Abolish Silicon Valley is both a heartfelt personal story about the wasteful inequality of Silicon Valley, and a rallying call to engage in the radical politics needed to upend the status quo. Going beyond ...

In his long-term artistic project Theatrum Botanicum, Uriel Orlow considers plants as actors on a political stage: protagonists of colonial trade, flower diplomacy, or bio-piracy. As such, they serve as a prism through which environmental colonial history can be re-negotiated. Theatrum Botanicum can be read as an attempt to decolonize both, history and nature. And for decolonizing nature, it is crucial how plants are considered as acting and living beings. If they tell stories about colonialism, how are they brought to speak?

“How could my grandmother have made millions from the antiquated traditions and ridiculous superstitions that I’d been so desperate to abandon?” An essay on the monetization of traditional Chinese medicine and failed promises of diaspora. “Aconite, My Roots,” by Henry Zhang is part of Resentment, the twenty-fifth issue of Triple Canopy, that is devoted to reclaiming—if not recuperating—resentment, especially as harbored by those who are used to fits of anger and bitterness being indicted as unproductive, petty, selfish, even pathological.