March: a journal of art & strategy

18/05/2023

"Often cyclical exhibitions invite curators or artistic directors from far away, which is interesting because they bring in another perspective. But at the same time, it’s a question of how you root that – if you want to root it in the local community or art community, or the structures of a city or place or country – and if the institutions are as supportive to other perspectives as they say they are. It’s the organization, the inviting party, that should step up their hospitality game there."

In this fourth Triennials Out of Time conversation, Prem Krishnamurthy, designer, author, educator, and Artistic Director for FRONT International 2022: Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, speaks with Zippora Elders, Chief Curator and Head of the Curatorial Department & Outreach for Gropius Bau in Berlin and Co-Curator of sonsbeek20→24 – Force Times Distance: On Labor and Its Sonic Ecologies, about their experiences curating large-scale cyclical exhibitions. (link in bio)

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Triennials Out of Time is a series of short conversations featuring artistic directors and curators of cyclical exhibitions organized by James McAnally for the Counterpublic 2023 civic exhibition and published by MARCH: a journal of art & strategy. Across disparate forms, Triennials Out of Time considers whether the slow build and release of multi-year, cyclical exhibitions may offer a more humane pace that allows proper engagement, inquiry, and reorientation to one’s place and publics.

IMAGE: Diana Al-Hadid, The Time Being, 2022. Commissioned by FRONT International. Photo: © FieldStudio. Courtesy of the artist: © Diana Al-Hadid

08/03/2023

MARCH: New Features + MDM Call for Proposals - https://mailchi.mp/march.international/6x1mbek7rw-15951582

We kicked off 2023 by closing out our longest feature to date, Publishing as Protocol, as well as launching two new features; From Multidirectional Memory to Multidirectional Moments (MDM) alongside a Call for Proposals to research geographically dispersed examples of how “multidirectional” appr...

28/02/2023

Can triennials and other cyclical exhibitions carry the seeds of other art worlds less reliant on spectacle and extraction that these circuits have long perpetuated?

In this first 'Triennials Out of Time' conversation, Counterpublic 2023 Artistic and Executive Director James McAnally speaks with farid rakun of ruangrupa, Artistic Directors of documenta fifteen, on the challenges and opportunities of cyclical exhibitions.

In this first Triennials Out of Time conversation, Counterpublic 2023 Artistic and Executive Director James McAnally speaks with farid rakun of ruangrupa, Artistic Directors of documenta fifteen.

22/02/2023

Do you remember when we said we were going to s l o w d o w n ? When we imagined that we would take this opportunity to |stop| ? To reimagine the art world, and our role in it? Did you? Did we?

We are pleased to announce our new feature, Triennials Out of Time, a series of short essays and interviews featuring artistic directors and curators of cyclical exhibitions organized with Counterpublic 2023. In this introductory essay, Executive + Artistic Director James McAnally discusses the conception of Counterpublic as a triennial civic exhibition that both adopts and adapts the understood forms of cyclical exhibition-making toward other uses.

Do you remember when we said we were going to s l o w d o w n ? When we imagined that we would take this opportunity to |stop| ? To reimagine the art world, and our role in it? Did you? Did we?

16/02/2023

We are pleased to announce a call for proposals for From Multidirectional Memory to Multidirectional Moments (MDM), a new long-term inquiry exploring the “promises” of noncompetitive and transversally connected “multidirectional memory” in memorial practices. With the aim of engaging the broadest range of possibilities, MDM invites artistic proposals that may take a variety of formats. See link below for more information.

While decentralization, decolonization, immateriality, and appropriation have long been topics of discussion within contemporary arts, From Multidirectional Memory to Multidirectional Moments considers how they remain mostly absent from more official and politically visible forms, spaces, and institutions dedicated to remembrance. In short, we ask: How do we conceptualize emerging practices and strategies which challenge dominant memory regimes and their collective representation in the public sphere?

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From Multidirectional Memory to Multidirectional Moments (MDM) is an artistic research project organized with the department of Artistic Strategies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Die Angewandte). With Palais des Beaux Arts Wien (PdBA) as a starting point, MDM has been developed by a core team of artists including Bernhard Garnicnig (Founder, PdBA) and Seth Weiner (current Artistic Director, PdBA), Antoine Turillon and Stephanie Misa (University of Applied Arts Vienna, Artistic Strategies), and Sarrita Hunn (editor, MARCH: a journal of art & strategy). MDM is made possible with support from the University of Applied Arts Vienna INTRA program.

https://march.international/beyond-competitive-memory-mdm-call-for-proposals/

We are pleased to announce a call for proposals for From Multidirectional Memory to Multidirectional Moments (MDM), a new long-term inquiry exploring the “promises” of noncompetitive and transversally connected “multidirectional memory” in memorial practices.

17/01/2023

To attend to transversal change is to attend to transformational methods – to ways of relating that are not accounted for by the current order.

In this final Publishing As Protocol essay, Marc Herbst unpacks the role of art and culture in transversal change and shares examples from Barcelona housing activism, the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, and Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin.

https://march.international/transversality-what-slips-away-while-moving-toward-common-becoming/

To attend to transversal change is to attend to transformational methods – to ways of relating that are not accounted for by the current order.

10/01/2023

Etherpad, a free and open-source collaborative live text editor, combines the minimal comfort of plain-text writing with the collective experience of writing with others.

In this new Publishing As Protocol essay, Martino Morandi reflects on Constant's use of Etherpads for collective writing, organizational tasks, as well as experimental publishing.
https://march.international/constant-padology/

Etherpad, a free and open-source collaborative live text editor, combines the minimal comfort of plain-text writing with the collective experience of writing with others.

04/01/2023

"Like the organizers of Giant Step, I was frustrated with the ineffectiveness of direct critique of a system that was oppressive and exploitative. Critique of neoliberalism often serves neoliberalism since, as Marina Vishmidt claims, it is too easily co-opted by the capitalist (art) institution as a cybernetic system – an institution that renders itself both unreceptive to radical change and conducive to the neoliberal hegemony. We urgently need alternative models, but we must first have a better understanding of the internal relation between the institution and critique, as Steyerl also claims."

> Continuing Vessel’s contribution to Publishing As Protocol, this new essay by Claire Louise Staunton reflects on her involvement with Giant Step, a multi-year program organized by Vessel from 2011 to 2012 that aimed to develop the concept of an “ideal” institution.

Claire Louise Staunton reflects on her involvement with Giant Step, a multi-year program organized by Vessel from 2011 to 2012 that aimed to develop the concept of an “ideal” institution.

22/12/2022

As private property and public space melt into each other, what modes of dissent help us rethink public space and public action?

In this new Publishing As Protocol essay, Sumugan Sivanesan reflects on Constant's recent worksession, Techno-Cul-de-Sac, which brought together artists, architects, and urban researchers for a collective encounter with Brussels via an investigation of zoning, infrastructure, and technology.

Sumugan Sivanesan is an anti-disciplinary artist, researcher and writer. Often working collaboratively his interests span migrant histories and minority politics, activist media, artist infrastructures and more-than-human rights.
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Unfolding through 2022, Publishing As Protocol gathers together existing and speculative examples from institutional (cultural) and technological (hacktivist) practices to reflect on how we publish, gather and organize under (and around) platform capitalism.

https://march.international/techno-on-the-radio-constants-techno-cul-de-sac/

Constant’s recent worksession, Techno-Cul-de-Sac, proposed a collective encounter with Brussels via an investigation of zoning, infrastructure, and technology, bringing together artists, architects, and urban researchers.

12/12/2022

"During the early days of the World Wide Web, it was considered a free, utopian, transnational space where information could flow freely across borders. What happened to the web is a sad story. Multinational corporations took over a large portion of the web (web 2.0) and turned it into a neoliberal dystopia (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram). Yet, this dark situation does not mean one should give up. Piracy is still practiced worldwide and offers a possibility, especially when people take charge of their tools of the trade. Hacking, cracking, and reverse engineering systems of control are part of an important mission to claim new spaces of freedom."

> Continuing Vessel’s contribution to Publishing As Protocol, this new essay by Hakan Topal reflects on his "Radio Materiality" project 'iTuneZ' imagined as a direct gesture to point out an extra-legal space to listen to what migrants play for comfort.

Hakan Topal is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. In 2000, he co-founded xurban_collective (2000–12), an international art and research group, and he has presented his personal and collective work at leading art museums and biennials. He represented Turkey in the 49th Venice Biennale, participated in the 8th Istanbul Biennial, Greater New York at MoMA PS1, the 9th Gwangju Biennale, and the 8th Bucharest Biennale. Topal received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the New School for Social Research, New York. He is currently an Associate Professor of New Media and Art+Design at the State University of New York at Purchase.
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Unfolding through 2022, Publishing As Protocol gathers together existing and speculative examples from institutional (cultural) and technological (hacktivist) practices to reflect on how we publish, gather and organize under (and around) platform capitalism.
https://march.international/itunez-a-playlist-project-for-radio-materiality/

Within the context of Vessel's Radio Materiality project, iTuneZ was imagined as a direct gesture to point out an extra-legal space to listen to what migrants play for comfort.

12/12/2022

More recently, the Covid-19 pandemic had us wondering whether we should weigh each international journey more carefully than before. How, we asked ourselves, can we make the most of every single airline ticket? Not that this appetite, however genuine, will translate into change overnight. The same curators who would bemoan our Carbon Footprint a few months ago, and hailed the virus as an opportunity, are already flying in their artists transatlantic, for a night or two. Change of this kind only tends to unfold over decades. It is measured in eras, not in biennials.

> Continuing Vessel’s contribution to Publishing As Protocol, this new essay by Tirdad Zolghadr reflects on his experience attending Vessel’s 2015 International Curatorial Workshop (ICW) in Bari, Italy.

Tirdad Zolghadr is a curator and writer. He currently teaches at the Berlin University of the Arts (Graduiertenschule UdK) and Bard College Berlin. Curatorial work includes biennial settings, long-term collective efforts, and a curatorship at KW Institute for Contemporary Art (2016–20). Published writing includes fiction and curatorial research such as 'REALTY: Beyond the Traditional Blueprints of Art & Gentrification' (Hatje Cantz, 2022).
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Unfolding through 2022, Publishing As Protocol gathers together existing and speculative examples from institutional (cultural) and technological (hacktivist) practices to reflect on how we publish, gather and organize under (and around) platform capitalism.
https://march.international/icw-2015-a-reflection/

Tirdad Zolghadr reflects on his experience attending Vessel’s 2015 International Curatorial Workshop (ICW) in Bari, Italy.

12/12/2022

Vessel is a nomadic curatorial organization and agency invested in supporting artistic and curatorial practices that are situated, responsive, and research-led. Driven by a biographical and epistemological belonging to the South – the Southern Europe and Mediterranean regions in particular – Vessel is interested in how social and ecological imagination can be enhanced in order to critically engage with the sets of conditions and infrastructures that sustain contemporary cultural practices.

In the context of Publishing As Protocol, Viviana Checchia and Anna Santomauro outline Vessel's collective, socially engaged curatorial practice ahead of a series of new essays reflecting on its eleven year history: situated but nomadic, responsive but not embedded, instituting but not institutionalized.

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Unfolding through 2022, Publishing As Protocol gathers together existing and speculative examples from institutional (cultural) and technological (hacktivist) practices to reflect on how we publish, gather and organize under (and around) platform capitalism.
https://march.international/vessel-a-meridian-practice/

Vessel is a nomadic curatorial organization and agency invested in supporting artistic and curatorial practices that are situated, responsive, and research-led.

18/11/2022

Building on our recent Conversations on Sound and Power feature organized with Sonic Insurgency Research Group (SIRG), we are pleased to announce “Sound, Power and Culture,” a winter study group on sound and power organized by SIRG member Josh Rios.

“Sound, Power and Culture” is an autonomous 4-week reading and discussion group that examines the relationship between sound, power, and culture through readings, informed conversations, and resource explorations. As with the first two editions, “Sound, Power and Culture” covers a very selective slice of specific readings, resources, and discussion that put Sound Studies in relation to colonial histories and various power dynamics. Social practices, cultures, and artists who have been historically marginalized within a Western framework will be centered.

Dates: Saturdays, January 07, 14, 21, 28
Time: 1:00PM – 3:00PM CST
Participant Limit: 20-25
Pricing: sliding scale $10-40+
See link for more information.
https://march.international/sound-power-and-culture/

Building on our recent Conversations on Sound and Power, we are pleased to announce “Sound, Power and Culture,” a winter study group organized Josh Rios in January 2023.

11/11/2022

We are pleased to announce the launch of “From Multidirectional Memory to Multidirectional Moments” (MDM), a new long term inquiry and artistic research project organized with the department of Artistic Strategies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (Die Angewandte).

The launch event “Loops, Multiplication & Remembrance,” on November 16th (18h) at Die Angewandte (Rustenschacherallee 2-4, 1020 Wien), will bring together the MDM core team for an evening of discussions with Palais des Beaux Arts Wien’s most recent commissioned artists Hannah Marynissen, Rafal Morusiewicz, Chris Dake-Outhet, and nathan c’ha.

With Palais des Beaux Arts Wien (PdBA) as a starting point, MDM’s core team of artists includes Bernhard Garnicnig (founder, PdBA) and Seth Weiner (current artistic director, PdBA), Antoine Turillon and Stephanie Misa (University of Applied Arts Vienna, Artistic Strategies), and Sarrita Hunn (founder/editor, MARCH) to research geographically dispersed examples of how “multidirectional” approaches to memory challenge assumptions and what new forms are emerging within contemporary art. Further on and offline MDM public presentations will be announced later in 2023.

https://march.international/from-multidirectional-memory-to-multidirectional-moments/

We are pleased to announce the launch of “From Multidirectional Memory to Multidirectional Moments, a new long term inquiry organized with the department of Artistic Strategies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. A launch event “Loops, Multiplication & Remembrance,” will take place on...

05/10/2022

In this sixth (and final) Conversation on Sound and Power, Sonic Insurgency Research Group chat with Sandra de la Loza whose work over the last two decades has featured archival, social, and site-specific investigations, immersive installations, and community events that ask: What do the silences, exclusions and erasures of the past reveal about the present and how do these “ghosts” make visible erased histories, unlock the imagination, and create counter-memories for the future?

Sandra de la Loza is founder of The Pochx Research Society of Erased and Invisible History, an ongoing collaborative project that engages the sites and subjects of history through critical inquiry and artistic processes. De la Loza’s work has been exhibited in major museums, alternative spaces and community centers in the United States and abroad. She is Assistant Professor of Chicana/o/x Studies at the California State University, Northridge. Current and upcoming exhibitions include: 'Undoing Time: Histories of Art and Incarceration' at the Berkeley Art Museum and Film Archive (2022) and 'Chicana Photographers' at the Tucson Museum of Art (2023).
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Conversations on Sound and Power is organized by Sonic Insurgency Research Group (Josh Rios, Anthony Romero and Matt Joynt) with a wide variety of contemporary artists, scholars, writers, activists, and interdisciplinary practitioners concerned with how sound and ideas about sound shape our historical, experiential, juridical, intersubjective, and current socio-political entanglements.

Sandra de la Loza’s research-based practice investigates the under layers of our present landscape to open portals and envision future worlds through collective memory and political imagination.

20/09/2022

We are pleased to announce Parsa Sanjana Sajid’s contribution to MARCH 01, “Dhaka Art Summit: Cultural Capital and the Long Tail of Colonial Time,” has been included in Perennial Biennial’s newest publication 'Local Perspectives on a Global Format.'

Responding to the need to reflect on the mechanisms of the art biennial, 'Local Perspectives on a Global Format' collects six local responses to biennials (and one triennial) in Shanghai, Ljubljana, São Paulo, Aichi, Dhaka, and Glasgow, and how they relate to the intentions, both stated and implicit, of their organizers. First published outside the international art press, these texts address the realities of an art exhibition that is caught between a tendency to universalize and a local, regional, or national desire for representation and participation.

Parsa Sanjana Sajid’s essay “Dhaka Art Summit: Cultural Capital and the Long Tail of Colonial Time,” first published in March 2020 in the inaugural print edition of MARCH, considers recent installments of DAS through its relationship to global capitalism and the cultural and political history of Bangladesh. Sajid dissects how colonial narratives are reproduced and reified at DAS, despite its self-proclaimed “noncommercial” formats and the political aims of its artistic engagements.

We are pleased to announce Parsa Sanjana Sajid's contribution to MARCH 01, Dhaka Art Summit: Cultural Capital and the Long Tail of Colonial Time, has been included in Perennial Biennial's newest publication Local Perspectives on a Global Format.

14/09/2022

What values do we embody that we struggle with or even desire to unlearn? What values exist in us that we have yet to give language to? Who are the people, plants, and places shaping what matters to us the most?

As part of Publishing As Protocol, we are delighted to share the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry’s inaugural "Values & Practices," a collectively sourced and living set of agreements aimed to ground those of us who gather through the Center within visions for autonomous and liberated communities. Read the "Values & Practices" excerpt online and download a PDF copy of the full publication.

Values & Practices is a collectively sourced and living set of agreements. This inaugural iteration invites those of us who gather through the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry to ground ourselves in our visions for autonomous and liberated communities.

30/08/2022

When the status quo in Colombia and Palestine includes systemic disenfranchisement and when the utterance of protest against this hegemonic control is so often met with violent crackdown, it makes sense that the insurgents might adapt.

In this new essay Beatriz E. Balanta and Noah Simblist ask: What were the political and, more importantly, the sentimental objectives of performances staged by subjects-in-revolt in Colombia and Palestine in spring 2021?

Given that protests are multivalent and culturally specific, we ask: What were the political and, more importantly, the sentimental objectives of performances staged by subjects-in-revolt in Colombia and Palestine in spring 2021?

22/07/2022

Arguably, presence is a quality of (music) performance that reveals aspects of representation that are not obvious in sound alone. The burgeoning philosophy of somaesthetics proposes that our bodies are an indispensable “tool of tools” and so by enhancing our bodily perceptions we may improve our quality of life.

Through reviewing the role of the voice and singing at CTM 2022, Sumugan Sivanesan considers how music affects audiences as receptors and, indeed, hosts for sounds.

Arguably, presence is a quality of (music) performance that reveals aspects of representation that are not obvious in sound alone. The burgeoning philosophy of somaesthetics proposes that our bodies are an indispensable “tool of tools” and so by enhancing our bodily perceptions we may improve ou...

12/07/2022

A long-running thread through the manifold work of Constant is an interest in collaborating with machines on installations, worksessions, and publications.

In this new Publishing As Protocol essay, An Mertens brings together a few activities from the Constant galaxy to show how their specific choice of F/LOSS tools and licenses and collective practices make these experiments relate in different ways to what has been described as e-literature.

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Unfolding through 2022, Publishing As Protocol gathers together existing and speculative examples from institutional (cultural) and technological (hacktivist) practices to reflect on how we publish, gather and organize under (and around) platform capitalism.

A long-running thread through the manifold work of Constant is an interest in collaborating with machines on installations, worksessions, and publications.

22/06/2022

In this fifth (two part) Conversation on Sound and Power, Sonic Insurgency Research Group discuss with Alex E. Chávez how his anthropological and autoethnographic practices has been instrumental regarding the relation between sound, power, and culture, especially in terms of how Latinx diasporic sonic traditions and experiments move through histories of migration.

Alex E. Chávez’s anthropological and autoethnographic practices address the relation between sound, power, and culture, especially in terms of how Latinx diasporic sonic traditions and experiments move through histories of migration.

31/05/2022

When the “Homer Pepe” NFT sold for 205 ETH ($320,000), Barry Threw cheered: “The art world is a software problem now.”

In this final/third essay co-published in partnership with Berliner Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (Berlin New Music Society - BGNM) for Process As Protocol and Publishing As Protocol, Geert Lovink analyses the pros and cons of NFTs and the potential of blockchain.

Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic, and author of many books including Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016), Organization after Social Media (with Ned Rossiter, 2018), Sad by Design (2019), and Stuck on the Platform (2022). In 2004, he started as a Research Professor (Lector) at the Amsterdam University of Applied Science (HvA), where he founded the Institute of Network Cultures. In late 2021 he was appointed Art and Network Cultures Chair in the Art History Department, University of Amsterdam.

PROCESS AND PROTOCOL was a weekend-long festival organized by BGNM at ACUD Macht Neu in Berlin April 1 – 3, 2022. >> protocol.bgnm.de
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Unfolding through 2022, Publishing As Protocol gathers together existing and speculative examples from institutional (cultural) and technological (hacktivist) practices to reflect on how we publish, gather and organize under (and around) platform capitalism.

When the “Homer Pepe” NFT sold for 205 ETH ($320,000), Barry Threw cheered: “The art world is a software problem now.”

24/05/2022

Over six weekends in spring 2021, artist Adelita Husni Bey met with a cohort of eight unionized healthcare workers based in the US and Denmark for an online filmmaking workshop focused on their experiences working in hospitals throughout the first year of the pandemic. Guided by Husni Bey’s research into historic pandemic protocols, of particular focus for this cohort was the designation of their work as “essential.”

What can the creative work of reflection offer amidst the ongoing demands of the job? Asa Mendelsohn discusses Adelita Husni Bey's 'On Necessary Work.'

Over six weekends in spring 2021, Adelita Husni Bey met with a cohort of eight unionized healthcare workers based in the US and Denmark for an online filmmaking workshop focused on their experiences working in hospitals throughout the first year of the pandemic.

17/05/2022

In this fourth Conversation on Sound and Power, Sonic Insurgency Research Group discusses with Allie Martin her use of ethnographic fieldwork and digital humanities methodologies to consider how gentrification impacts and impedes on Black sonic life.

Allie Martin uses ethnographic fieldwork and digital humanities methodologies to consider how gentrification impacts and impedes on Black sonic life.

11/05/2022

From the privilege of suburbia and gated communities to histories of segregation, playgrounds are powerfully representative of the economic and psychic divides across race, gender, class, and physical mobility.

In this new essay, Lital Khaikin discusses the ways in which children play in public spaces have constricted over the past century, from a free-range anarchy and “the world as playground,” to playing areas that deter both escapees and intruders with signs, fences, and rules.

From the privilege of suburbia and gated communities to histories of segregation, playgrounds are powerfully representative of the economic and psychic divides across race, gender, class, and physical mobility.

03/05/2022

Trust is a felt quality of human relations, ephemeral and changing. Social media is an attempt to extend real sociality and to represent real trust. What is the shape of this data?

In this second essay co-published in partnership with Berliner Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (Berlin New Music Society - BGNM) for Process As Protocol and Publishing As Protocol, Sarah Friend discusses the history of trust in computing.

PROCESS AND PROTOCOL was a weekend-long festival organized by BGNM at ACUD Macht Neu in Berlin April 1 – 3, 2022.
>> protocol.bgnm.de
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Unfolding through 2022, Publishing As Protocol gathers together existing and speculative examples from institutional (cultural) and technological (hacktivist) practices to reflect on how we publish, gather and organize under (and around) platform capitalism.

Trust is a felt quality of human relations, ephemeral and changing. Social media is an attempt to extend real sociality and to represent real trust. What is the shape of this data?

28/04/2022

Where oral histories have long been anchored in practices of repetition and versioning, systems of publishing are still learning to trust and fully incorporate these dynamics, finding room for changes that are not based in the singular but in the collective.

In this new Publishing As Protocol essay, Mia Melvær discusses reparative publishing as a practice that embraces not knowing what the future might bring.

Where oral histories have long been anchored in practices of repetition and versioning, systems of publishing are still learning to trust and fully incorporate these dynamics, finding room for changes that are not based in the singular but in the collective.