Austrian magazine is a matter of an anniversary that looks back on 30 years of art and cultural criticism. Spring Garin Gathering magazine friends into “reflexive self-expression.” Artists and writers look back on the hopes and ideals of the mid-1990s, particularly the promises of the Internet at the time and the potential for its critique, and how many of those hopes were disappointed if not shattered.
Philosopher Boris Buden sets the dark tone of the issue, returning to a hopeless entry by artists and regulars Spring Garin Contributor Brian Holmes Net Time After Donald Trump’s reelection: “The issues that have been driving this mailing list for over 30 years have been crushed before us. The opportunities for a more open and fair world that we all believed in in some way have been wiped out by a huge ball of destruction.
Net Time and Spring GarinBuden writes that she shares not only this idealism, but also the experience of living in “a common world and a common historical era.” At the heart of both projects is the activist spirit who saw culture as “anywhere” and “everything” as culture – “include history.” Artists, theorists and activists had the sense that they belonged to the elite of historical progress. Abangalde. ‘
Looking back, this was simple progressivism, an ideological “creature of that era” rooted in the benevolent belief in “Westernization.” Art, theory and behaviorism often managed to “change the better world,” but could not prevent “the world at its worst.”
Springerin 1/2025
The first issue of Spring Garin The war on the Balkans, which appeared in 1995, was enraged by hundreds of kilometers south of Vienna. In July, the Srebrenica massacre took place.
But progressives argue that Buden had a blind spot of ethnic cleansing and nationalist hatred. The war was then “Balkanized” and “separated from Western civilization.” The “merciful Westerniser” figure produced a “huge pack of creatures” that dominated the political stage 30 years later.
The changing landscape
Critic Yvonne Volkart fondly recalls the optimism of technology Spring GarinHow she faxed her contributions being put online in the “net section” as a child.
“Editors, authors and artists work on the aesthetics of the right form and media, not in art-historical or formal ways, but from the left-wing perspective that comes from cultural studies, from the perspective of the postfeminist, media ecological, interdisciplinary, curated left.
The new political front appears to create a similar collective sense among today’s “art producers,” but the landscape has changed. The old protagonists of “Internet Practice and Online Community” have many advanced into artistic research.
‘Art is not just artwork, criticism is not an afterthought, it is a method that both were developed jointly, a way of knowing more accurately and sharing knowledge, wanting to share knowledge, form alliances, restlessness, restlessness. Spring Garin Do the same thing. ”
Dispute space
Art criticism has lost its combativeness, Süreyyya Evren writes in an article in Pugnasious Artistic Practices. One example is the performance in which artist Hiwa K. and philosopher Bakir Alo (both Iraq-Kurdish) took part in physical and verbal boxing matches over Kurdish questions.
“What Hiwa K wanted to question is whether he could talk about politically and culturally sensitive issues without conflict. In his opinion, the transition to wrestling seemed very natural, as normal conversation turned out to be inadequate.
Another example is Dana Hoey, who organized a Thai boxing and jiu-jitsu course for citizens and police men in Detroit (2017) to highlight police violence. “Her combat training for women” suggests that “the extension of conflict ratio phors to everyday problems and that art does not need to be limited to empowering the less fortunate and criticizing the dynamics of institutional power.” The criticism suggests that “there is a need to actively create spaces for today’s conflict, hear voices, and promote wise discourse beyond the current situation.”
Place of protest
Artists duo Alis Kraysher and Andreas Sheikmann, professors at Fine Arts Vienna Academy, answer two questions raised by the editorial team. Where was the smaller environment? Spring Garin Was the project 30 years ago? ”
Two cases of protest show their reaction. One was when academy students protested Austria’s imminent coalition between conservative opp and far-right FPö early in 2025. And the other 30 years ago, Deutschsein In Kunstall Dusseldorf, which aims to boost Germany’s confidence in a national climate characterized by Nazi rallies and attacks on immigrants.
The difference between the two lies in the enduring live commentary on social media today and the pressure and fantasy it creates. Note that the academy is no longer a place of inconsistent representation, as it fears oppression from the far right. Spring Garin To develop a different vision:
“The editorial office can be a place where you learn to practice, write articles together, drink coffee, make time, lose your smartphone, or strike.”
The Illusion of Subjectivity
Hans Christian Danny recalls his personal history Spring Garin And the adjacent online movements simultaneously show that cultural left ideals are increasingly converging with the discernible politics of anti-Semitic far-right.
He challenges this development to criticism of “objective truths” formulated by thinkers like Donna Haraway, who coined the term “divine trick” for the illusion of objectivity. “At the end of the final millennium, when Haraway wrote this, the exaggerated rebuttal seemed like an appropriate means of breaking patriarchal hegemony.” However, within a decade of “the politics of emotions,” it opens the door to what Adorno called “crypto counter-counter” (Adorno).
With the discussion of Israel and Palestine reaching a new dimension, Danny summons the responsibility of media literacy for online images, particularly from an editorial perspective.
Review by Kathrin Heinrich
Source: Eurozine – www.eurozine.com
