2016 in review: some holiday reading from aqnb

, 19 December 2016

Short of providing a list of things that were good (or bad) in 2016, here is a summary of a year that has seen AQNB, its audience and its art of interest evolve into something that goes well beyond a generational trend or glitch. Shaping and being shaped by a moment of social upheaval, the internet as a medium and a political tool has had an indelible effect on the global landscape, laying a strong foundation for a very uncertain future. Whether there’s ever been a ‘better time’ is up for debate but there’s no doubting that unparalleled access to a lot of information for some has led to an awareness that is more expansive than any of a known recent history. The instrumentalisation (and control) of the online mind, too, has been enormous. Its effects both positive and very, very negative. 

Hence, we enter into a new era. Life after Brexit, a Trump election and an ongoing proxy war for which all of us are responsible. Until then, here’s a look back at some of our favourite writing for 2016, so you can brace yourselves for the future.

Features

Value added: an artist considers art’s role in the property market

In the wake of aggressive property development and gentrification in London, artist-writer Mitch, wanders through the geography of the English capital to try and identify the effects artists and artistic communities can have on an area. These places include real estate in the London suburb of Peckham, the recent relocation of Project Native Informant, the second incarnation of artist-run space The Woodmill and Peckham Road organisation South London Gallery.

Hot young thing: An artist unpacks fetish and (self-)objectification in the art world

A young artist unpacks her very personal experience of institutional misogyny in the art world as a site of reification for dominant patriarchal ideologies. Leading the reader through a narrative of her subordination to, and ultimate liberation from sexism via Catholicism, Sappho questions the externalizing and re-internalizing of violence on the self as a direct result of a restrictive art market.      

Convening with Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter

One of the many events organized as part of Simone Leigh’s exhibition The Waiting Room, writer Frankie Archer joined BWA for BLM, which took over three floors of the New Museum for an evening of communal healing, solidarity and action. Leigh brought together over a hundred black women artists to take part in programming installations, performances and screenings situated within black female subjectivity.

‘Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter’ (2016). Photo by Madeleine Hunt Ehrlich. Courtesy New Museum, New York.

Interviews

An interview with Chloe Wise

New-York based artist Chloe Wise spoke to writer Audrey Phillips about the machinations of marketing, the banality of trends, and the power behind the ‘shiny’. Famous for her clever critique of the fashion and the consumer industry, Wise also touched on the similarities between how women and food are described, as well as the misogynistic language surrounding female representation.

An interview with Easter

aqnb editor Jean Kay caught up with music duo Stine Omar and Max Boss of Easter in Berlin, to discuss the web of associations that runs through the lyrical, musical, visual and conceptual amalgam of their work. It’s a conversation that touches on trolling, gender fluidity and fetish.

An interview with Candice Lin

LA-based artist Candice Lin presented A Body Reduced to Brilliant Colour at London’s Gasworks. It was her first solo exhibition in London, where she explores the perishable nature of the work and its deep roots within objects, colonialism and language.

AQNB x ViC video editorial collaborations

Claire Tolan: ‘Thinking Systems (ASMR)’ p.2

Berlin-based artist Claire Tolan talks about her practice, from mixing ASMR sounds live on air for her BCR show ‘You’re Worth It’ to applying a growing archive to her ringtone database Shush Systems, while investigating how social events in physical spaces can model themselves on interactions on the internet.  

Anna Zett, ‘Theory of Everything’, p.1

The Berlin-based artist behind “modern research drama” This Unwieldy Object, Anna Zett, talks about working with video as a medium and gathering empirical evidence of the attitudes and perspectives surrounding her chosen subjects, including dinosaurs, boxing and the brain

Klein: ‘Key Change’

London-based producer and performer Klein follows up the release of her first EP Lagata with a conversation about being self-taught within the electronic realm, and what has influenced her practice, from Gospel to Pavarotti.

AQNB x ViC screening presentations

As part of an ongoing series of screening, reading, performance and discussion events organised in collaboration with video production partners Video in Commonaqnb editor Jean Kay visited art spaces in London, Los Angeles and Berlin – all key cultural centres in the art editorial platform’s network – to present work by artists along a given theme.

‘The Future Is Here, It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed’

Presented at Berlin’s Import Projects in March, ‘The Future Is Here, It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed’ interrogated the systems and infrastructures embedded in the internet and how these affect distribution, flows of information and power.

‘At the Backend’

Presented at London’s Assembly Point in May, explored the questions and developments that emerge when reformulating the categories, formats and frameworks that come with shifts in networked communication, and its influence on community-building and identity-formation.

‘Accessing Economies: Withdrawal + Engagement’

Presented at Club Pro Los Angeles in July, ‘Accessing Economies: Withdrawal + Engagement’ examined contemporary discourse developing beyond ideas of visibility and representation to notions of assimilation into existing cultural paradigms to interrogate the politics of identity within commercial or institutional spheres. 
 
 
Presented at Berlin’s Vierte Welt for 3hd Festival in October, the event interrogated what is actually meant by ‘the future’ and whether the past has a role in determining it by asking, ‘What happens to the present when we’re stuck in the future?’
 

 

James Ferraro, ‘Burning Prius’ (2016). Courtesy Château Shatto, Los Angeles.

Event + performances

James Ferraro’s live performance of ‘Burning Prius’ at Château Shatto

An evening of poetry Buenos Tiempos, Int.’s home during Art Brussels 2016

Johannes Paul Raether’s performance leads his audience into a real-life problem

The final Paramount Ranch alternative art fair in a Wild West film set town

Recommended listening

n-prolenta’s Get Me Bodied mix

Celyn June’s Location 

COOL FOR YOU’s ‘SEPARATISM’ mix

ssaliva’s ‘spellbound’ track

Recommended reading

General Fine Arts Issue 1, Vol. 2

Sarah M Harrison’s All The Things

The Rare Earth catalogue

‘No Internet, No Art’ – A Lunch Bytes Anthology‘**

Header image: Georgie Nettell, Current Affairs (2016). Install view. Courtesy Project Native Informant, London.