Catastrophe

In this issue we intended to consider the grand narratives of history and angels, death and destruction, brutal acts and events, memory, magic, and cruelty, ruins, resistance, and remorse. Our intentions are grandiose, of course, but these themes are indeed woven throughout the contributions herein. We must ask in what times we live and how works of art may address our present belonging and artistic invention may disrupt and reframe our present – or its dominant descriptions. In what some call the end times (ecological crisis, social ruptures, economic inequality), the question we cannot cease to ask is how artists – or works of art – might confront the future, and, as V. I. Lenin said, ‘to begin from the beginning, over and over again’.
 
Featuring works by: Federica Bueti, John Cussans, Matthew Cusick, T. J. Demos, Geraint Evans, Mark Fisher, Rainer Ganahl, Khaled Hourani, Norman Klein, Jack Persekian, Pavel Pepperstein, Matthew Poole, Gustav Metzger, Joseph Redwood-Martinez, Jean-Jacques Rullier, Jacques Sauvageot, Joy Sleeman, John Timberlake, Jalal Toufic, Julie Westerman, Geoffrey Wildanger.