Omer Fast by Nav Haq; COVER STORY: Hicksploitation by Richard Hawkins; FUTURA: Markus Miessen by Hans Ulrich Obrist; ENIGMA No.5 by Christian Frosi; PIONEERS: Robert Breer by Simone Menegoi; Marlo Pascual by Gianni Jetzer; EXCURSUS #2 by Zak Kyes; Vandasye by Leah Whitman Salkin; PANORAMA: Utrecht, For example by Michele D'Aurizio; Marte Eknæs by Melissa Gronlund; ON EXHIBITIONS: AIDS Timeline by Paola Nicolin; Erik Bell & Kristoffer Frick by Vanessa Joan Müller; MAPPING THE STUDIO: Ryan Gander by Luca Cerizza; LAST QUESTION by Slavs & Tatars.

MAIN THEME: On Language as Violence. Edited by Brad Butler & Karen Mirza. About the Title by Edit Molnár; On Language as Violence by Brad Butler; special project by Brad Butler & Karen Mirza; The Obsolescence of the Arrow Maker by Nick Davies.

THE KALEIDOSCOPIC FILES: The Architectural Brain by Edwin Gardner (Architecture), Learning Webs by Yann Chateigné Tytelman (Art), Italy: The New Domestic Landscape by Andreas Angelidakis (Design), Style Boutique by Matteo Bordone (Fashion), Christoph Hochhäusler by Kai von Rabenau (Film), Stephen King by Massimo Gardella (Literature), The Orient Express by Arash Saedinia (Music), Banu Cennetoglu by Sylvia Kouvali (People), Dexter Sinister by Philip Aarons (Publishing), Anchor and Hope by Gavin Everall (Spot).

MONO: Armando Andrade Tudela. Interview by Francesco Manacorda; Field Film by Sigfrida Letal; Esquinas/Corners by John Slyce.

topHICKSPLOITATION
BY RICHARD HAWKINS

An orthodox analysis ranging from Texas to Renaissance figuration techniques to contemporary country to Picasso. One of the most prominent Los Angeles-based artists discusses the work of AARON CURRY, one of the most promising representatives of the new generation.

Tommy..., detail, 2007
Courtesy: David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles
and Michael Werner Gallery, New York

LOCAL YOKEL
The first thing you should understand about Aaron is that he’s not originally from your culture, but through time, curiosity and desire, he has assimilated into it. Which, of course, can be said of most people growing up outside of major metropolitan areas. But Texans, especially we small town Texans, suffer from a particular kind of anti-culture undertow.
Most of Texas does have all the affable homespun charm and humor of hick flicks and King of the Hill, but it’s worth remembering that Texas is also Bush country. Take a trip to Dallas or Houston someday and you might meet some of the nation’s most friendly people… but live there for a while and you’ll be tempted to paint a much darker picture of the Lone Star State in large strokes of absolute intolerance and sheer resentful ignorance.

topUTRECHT, for example
BY MICHELE D'AURIZIO

Where social and urban conditions generate a new sense of urgency, art and design institutions explore the meaning of words like “engagement” and “experimentation,” trying to beat a new path in the direction of genuine research.

“Non-Solutions. On the interaction between space and matter”
a conversation between artist Mirjam Thomann and architect Jesko Fezer,
Casco, Utrecht, 28 November 2009
Photo: Casco

The urban density of the Netherlands and, more generally, of the area known as the “Eurocore” (the expression is Rem Koolhaas’s and refers to the northwest of Germany and Benelux) is such that this region functions along lines similar to those of a metropolis. In this scenario, it is possible to think of Utrecht, as well as Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Eindhoven, as districts of a single metropolitan center. The cultural institutions of these cities have embraced this ambiguous situation and developed a plurality of approaches that are capable of operating locally, nationally and globally. In the case of Utrecht, the better-known Basis voor Actuele Kunst (BAK) and Casco: Office for Art, Design and Theory share the field today with ten or so other cultural centers, including Aorta, Expodium, Tumult and Vrede van Utrecht. Utrecht furthermore hosts a biennial of design, the Utrecht Manifest: Biennial for Social Design, and is home to the largest universities and art schools in the Netherlands. “With the different punctuations in their respective programs and practices, they together seem to me to contribute to forming a different cultural climate,” Binna Choi, the director of Casco, has said. Indeed in Utrecht, cultural productions based on inter- or trans-disciplinary approaches are testing the limits of various fields and postulating new roles for design, art and the applied arts. A sense of urgency is felt in the city with regard to the most pressing problems facing society. Utrecht’s cultural institutions are cultivating this sense, along with the sort of speculative thinking that translates those problems into the raw material for artistic and design activities and focuses attention on the unprecedented scenarios that these activities delineate. “Let us rethink what our next assignment could be,” says Guus Beumer, artistic director of Utrecht Manifest’s 2009 edition. In Utrecht, the discussions are animated and purposeful—including the one on the prospect that the Netherlands’ shared perspective and common action might one day give rise to a new cultural movement.

topArmando Andrade Tudela
BY FRANCESCO MANACORDA

Two former Royal College colleagues discuss abstraction, the dynamics between modernity and tropicality, architect Lina Bo Bardi and poet Raymond Roussel, as if redrafting the premises of their school-age manifesto.

Transa, 2005
Collection: Tate, London
© Armando Andrade Tudela

In the opening chapter of The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), G. K. hesterton describes a game called “heat The Prophet.” The aim of the game is to question what the author considers as one of the prevailing predicaments of the modernity: how do we survive the phantasmagoria of progress without physical or spiritual exhaustion? The answer is buried in the game: let the old prophet tell his prophecy, then wait until he dies and, like a modern man, promote oblivion and disregard of the prophecy. Armando Andrade Tudela examines this double movement of envisaging and de-investing prophecies and historical legacies in his work. Elements of distortion and refraction both in the realm of the formal and the social are combined with a relentless search for a (possibly mythical) sign of origin for these initially progressive ideas.

WHEN WE WERE BOTH STUDENTS AT THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART, WE KEPT TALKING ABOUT OUR INTENTION OF ISSUING A MANIFESTO OF “TROPICAL ABSTRACTION.” I THINK THERE IS STILL ROOM FOR THAT COMBINATION OF WORDS, ESPECIALLY IF ONE DOES NOT NECESSARILY ANCHOR THEM IN CONTEMPORARY ART JARGON. FOR EXAMPLE, THE NOTION OF ABSTRACTION ETYMOLOGICALLY ENTAILS A VIOLENT ACT: THE LATIN ABSTRAHERE MEANS “TO DETACH FROM SOMEWHERE.” IN THIS SENSE, ONE COULD SEE YOUR WORK AS A MOVEMENT OF TAKING SOMETHING FROM ONE GEOGRAPHICAL OR SEMANTIC LOCATION AND POSITIONING IT SOMEWHERE ELSE, AN OPERATION THAT HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE METAPHORICAL AND MATERIAL CONDITIONS OF EXILE.

I remember that we had many entries for our manifesto, but hardly any of them was art-related. I have a hypothesis about why that happened (which is related to the reason we still believe that “Tropical Abstraction” can be recuperated as an idea—albeit with another title!): it was because what we were talking about back then and what we were searching for was an “environment to work,” something that would shake up the terrain. We took elements of what we thought were the “tropics,” but even then we knew that it was impossible to have a faultless image of what the “tropics” were really about, because we were not referring to them as a real demographic but inevitably as a topography of “detachment.”