Mousse #89

Shu Lea Cheang, Martin Herbert, Adelita Husni-Bey, Karimah Ashadu, Byung-Chul Han, Anthony Huberman, Sohrab Mohebbi...

Can we resist instantaneousness? And emotional mining?
The Opinion column of this issue, penned by Martin Herbert, reminds us that Marcel Duchamp once explained his use of time as such: "Oh, I'm a breather, I'm a respirateur, isn't that enough?" For those who retain the privilege of being able to breathe, doing it slower could help delay immediate responses triggered by hyper-activity and hyper-visibility, and, then, help to engage or disengage (harder, better, faster, stronger). Philosopher Byung-Chul Han proposes contemplation as a countermeasure to the "hell of the same," as an exercise in not attending to some things in order to attend to others. To make time, it takes time.
In the Criticism section, artist jina valentine states that "Artworks are ultimately hypotheticals, proposals for how to make sense of the world and its Problems." She also asks: "What can we learn by studying the mechanisms of how a problem is registered and addressed?" In her latest book, Imperfect Solidarities (Floating Opera Press, 2024), Aruna D'Souza questions whether, under neoliberalist rule, empathy is an effective tool for political expression "because it is predicated on individual transformation rather than collective action. There are other dangers, too, with posing empathy as a prerequisite to political solidarity. Those revolve around questions of who is worthy of such feeling. . . . The attempts by peoples and governments to dehumanize should be treated as the problem requiring repair; instead, we put the burden on those who are being dehumanized to argue for their worthiness of empathy." Acknowledging contradictions and systemic discomforts would be a better starting point.
Looking at extractive infrastructures, at any scale, and their operations on the ground, amid individuals, as artists like Adelita Husni Bey and Karimah Ashadu do, implies also spending time with discomfort—learning from it and disrupting the construction of its representation. Our Survey studies Shu Lea Cheang, an artist who has developed a visual language for "the extraction of excitability from the body as an engine of contemporary political economy"—as McKenzie Wark writes—since the beginning of her long career. While developing experimental films that took up to three decades to complete, she developed experimental projects and experimental methodologies of media activism
by updating, reconfiguring, queering, and proceeding at sometimes undetectable speeds.
Or is it just different speeds and temporalities? In her book The Garden Against Time (Picador, 2024), reviewed here by painter Louis Fratino, Olivia Laing says: "There was something else, too. I was exhausted by the perpetual, agonised now of the news. I didn't just want to journey backwards through the centuries. I wanted to move into a different understanding of time: the kind of time that moves in spirals or cycles, pulsing between rot and fertility, light and darkness." Back to reading, then. Thank you.

Mousse is a bimonthly contemporary art magazine. Established in 2006, Mousse contains interviews, conversations, and essays by some of the most important figures in international criticism, visual arts, and curating today, alternated with a series of distinctive articles in a unique tabloid format.
Mousse (Mousse Publishing) also publishes numerous catalogues, essays and curatorial projects, artist books and editions (see the corresponding publisher's page).

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published in November 2024

English edition

23,5 x 32 cm (softcover)

256 pages (ill.)

16.00 €

in stock

topic

Contemporary art

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