The liberal capitalist world order that prevailed after 1989 is today in a stage of advanced disintegration. The collapse of this order exposes the illiberal core of its freedoms and forms of ownership shaped by the market: the violent unfreedoms of the dispossessed as well as the willingness of the propertied to use violence. Art, too, reveals itself as the venue of these forces and their exclusions: Through the downfall of liberality, the modern institution of “veranstaltlichte Kunst” (“institutionalized art”, Arnold Hauser) and its social legitimacy are also increasingly called into question. Illiberal Arts is a search for forms concerning an artistic “Lebensarbeit” (“life’s work”, Lu Märten, publicist and art critic, 1879–1970) initiated with international artists, poets and authors. In the cracks of the decaying forms of market accumulation, anti-identitarian, communal horizons burst open, as do collective forms of perception and political spontaneities. The project subjects these to a practical test. For Lu Märten, “a person’s whole life’s work” was considered artistic; what was artistic didn’t always have to become art. Perhaps what became art doesn’t necessarily have to remain art either. 

With contributions by Cassandra Press, Raven Chacon with Candice Hopkins, Cut away, with effects (2021), Bill Dietz, Stephan Dillemuth, Övul Ö. Durmuşoğlu, Thomas Eggerer, Frank Engster, Anselm Franke, Ciarán Finlayson, keyon gaskin, Melanie Gilligan, Larne Abse Gogarty, Nicholas Grafia, Tamar Guimarães, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Danny Hayward, Johanna Hedva, Ho Rui An, Anne Imhof, Pauline Curnier Jardin with the Feel Good Cooperative (Dana, Giuliana, Alexandra Lopez, Serena Olcuire, Gilda Star, Barby Valentina), Lisa Jeschke, Karrabing Film Collective, Aristilde Paz Justine Kirby, Anja Kirschner, Dani Leder, Jota Mombaça, Rosalind C. Morris, MYSTI, Jenny Nachtigall, Henrike Naumann, Fumi Okiji, Orakel, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Steve Reinke, Mikołaj Sobczak, Juliana Spahr, Kerstin Stakemeier, Jordan Strafer, Sunset Open Call (Kasi Althaus, Elena Peters Arnolds, Kathy Seitzinger Hepburn, Laura L. LePere, Aude Lèvere, Andrea Victoria Paradiso, Denise Pinnell, Christin Rothe, Suzie Sullivan, Amy Sutryn, Rosana VanHorn), Marina Vishmidt, Simone White, Philip Wiegard, Kandis Williams, Constantina Zavitsanos.

Contributions by John Waters, Mink Stole, Gary Indiana, et al.

Cookie Mueller was a firecracker, a cult figure, a wit, a wild child, a writer, a go go dancer, a mother, an unlikely queer icon, an alchemist, a lightning rod in dark times. A child of suburban 50‘s Maryland and post-beatnik 60’s freakdom, she made her name first as an actress in the films of John Waters, and then as an art critic and columnist, a writer of hilarious and sublime stories and short fiction and a maven of the Downtown art world. Edgewise tells the story of Cookie‘s life through an oral history composed from over 80 interviews with the people who knew her. After tracing back some of the steps of the author’s 7-year trip in search of Cookie, the voices take us from the late 60’s artist communes of Baltimore to 70’s Provincetown where romantics and queers crawled the dunes and discos, to the sleepless creative high of post-industrial Bohemian New York, through 80‘s West Berlin and Positano, and into the depths and contradictions of Cookie’s life and loves.

Since her death from AIDS in 1989, Cookie’s work and life have made her an underground icon. Her original texts, first published by Hanuman Books and Semiotext(e), have been reprinted by Serpent’s Tail, and she is remembered for her appearances in the No Wave films and theater of Amos Poe, Michel Auder, Gary Indiana and others.

Along with the text, Edgewise consists of original artwork, unpublished photographs and archival material, and photo contributions by Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, David Armstrong, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar and others.

Edgewise is a meditation on memory and story-telling.

How can art libraries be generative resources and sites of action for all who identify as queer, as women, as Black, as Indigenous, as people of colour? What does it mean to consider the art library as a collective practice that spans multiple scales? In shelf documents artists, writers, curators, teachers, and librarians reflect on their engagements with books, libraries and art-library-as-practice.

Between a reader, an artist’s book, a project documentation and a catalogue, shelf documents might recall a pamphlet, a roadmap, or a recipe book that doesn’t tell you what to do. It is a book that gets mis-shelved.

With drawings by Heide Hinrichs

Edited by Heide Hinrichs, Jo-ey Tang and Elizabeth Haines, and designed by Sara De Bondt.

shelf documents: art library as practice features contributions by Sara De Bondt, Rachel Dedman, Elizabeth Haines, Heide Hinrichs, Laura Larson, Samia Malik, Melanie Noel, Marisa C. Sánchez, David Senior, Jo-ey Tang, Ersi Varveri and Susanne Weiß. 

Published by Track Report, Antwerp and b_books, Berlin.

Published in January 2021