A conversation with Steven Warwick aka Heatsick about his March 2016 show Neutral at Exile in Berlin, followed by the text of his play Neonliberal, in which a gaggle of animated superfoods travel around Fortress Europe seeking the hip and the accelerated; and an exclusive Heatsick track, StaylienZ.

The original idea for Almanac was to make a diary or “book of hours” that would reflect on my father’s life, and his passing. I chose a format concentrating on marking time: the 52-week calendar, the equinox and solstice, the punctuation of the beginning, middle, and end, etc. While the graphic and symmetrical imaging of sacrificial altars, movie screens, and deco lighting propose an odd symbolic orientation, the pairing of projected platonic shapes and Dore’s images of Dante’s journey, allow different ways to engage with the world. A mock-up stage is set for a tragic/comedy — a guide through the everyday and ...

Although a “closet drama” is by definition a play meant to be read rather than performed, this does not preclude an attempt at staging the anima. Unlinking “closet drama” from its primary theatrical definition in this way frees up other connotations for “closet drama” as well, which I think serves the plays. “Anima,” Latin for soul or vitality, is also Jung’s word for emergent femininity. If we proceed towards a performance, anything in italics should be considered a stage direction, even if it seems to interrupt speech. These directions should be taken seriously and enacted wherever possible (through set, lighting, audio, ...

Stephen Melville is Professor of History of Art at the Ohio State University and has published widely on contemporary art as well as on issues in contemporary theory and historiography. With Philip Armstrong and Laura Lisbon he curated the major exhibition of contemporary painting As Painting: Division and Displacement (Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 2001). His publications include As Painting: Division And Displacement (exhibition catalogue, MIT Press 2001), and Seams: Art As A Philosophical Context (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1996). He is currently completing a book on Hegel and contemporary art. In 2007, Stephen Melville was invited to ...

As part of our publishing program engaged with social activism, Printed Matter published the Artists & Activists Pamphlet Series between 2008 and 2012. Inspired by the legacy of the political pamphlet, these modest format publications offered artists and collectives a space to address some of the social and political concerns of our time and critically examine the concept of art and activism. Twenty pamphlets were created in total, and they were distributed for free at the Printed Matter storefront and included in mail-order packages. Printed Matter is now making the entire series available for free download through our website.

The Bare Prison of Santo Stefano is the seventh issue of a series of publications published by Wilfried Lentz. The Bare Prison of Santo Stefano (2011) is published as an accompaniment to the presentation of a series of works with the same title at Frieze Art Fair 2011. This publication is signed and numbered in an edition of 250. The Prison of Santo Stefano, 2011 is informed by research into the state of detention. Focusing on a prisoner’s general conditions, Biscotti analyses the psychological effects caused by isolation, the aim of which is to destroy physical and intellectual abilities. The project ...

This book is based on the performance Batsong, rehearsals for an audioplay, which took place at APF LAB in New York, March 2009. This performance was an attempt to tell the story of a female singer, plagued by the inability to hear her voice objectively. I wanted to depict a narrative about failed perspective through sound but, before we began, had no idea how to develop a situation to render this failure. Using scattered pages of dialogue, monologue, actions and instructions I’d written—along with lists of objects for imitating sounds, one small room and a stationary recording device with one microphone—four ...

Playwright, poet and activist Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) was known for his theory of the Epic Theatre and his attempts to break down the division between high art and popular culture. The Threepenny Opera, his collaboration with composer Kurt Weill, was a milestone in musical theatre, and plays like Mother Courage and Galileo changed the course of modern drama and aesthetic theory. Framed by two world wars, the Weimar Republic and a global depression, Nazism and exile and East German socialism, Brecht’s own life became a project, illuminating and intervening in the ongoing crisis of modern experience, shaped by capitalism, nationalism and visions of social utopia. Brecht ...

In the book there are excerpts from commentaries, sketches of costumes as well as drawings of scenes from a theatrical play. Set in the outskirts of Moscow in a place called Biryulevo, the event taking place in the lives of the characters of this book might seem senseless to us and their actions futile and second rate…

In this episode John talks with Calla Henkel. She was born in 1988 in Minneapolis, MN, USA. A writer, playwright, director and artist, she currently lives and works in Berlin. She has staged plays at Volksbühne Berlin, The Whitney Museum of Art, as well as at New Theater, the experimental theatre space she founded and programmed in Berlin from 2013-2015. Her art writing has been published in periodicals such as Texte zur Kunst, Spike, Mousse, and others. Her artistic work with Max Pitegoff has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. She currently operates a bar, performance space and film ...

At the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Hannah Weinberger leaves viewers to their own devices in a three-part show that begins from their very first steps in the venue’s entrance hall. Her interventions, concise and dense, are based on an infrared installation that reacts to the public’s presence, drawing visitors into a disconcerting yet invigorating exchange.

Things would be much simpler if there existed a consistent means of evaluating art’s capacity to provide a concrete value for people. It’s a problem to which capital provides the most immediate solution—beyond the mundane routine of the art market, Brandeis University’s (ongoing) attempt to close their Rose Art Museum and liquidate its entire collection stands as a particularly unfortunate example of how a priceless collection of art, given the right circumstances (total financial meltdown), still finds its price. One is also reminded of the tragic decision by Middlesex University to close its renowned philosophy department in order to cut ...