Editorial: Issue 15, Autumn 2008

The intersection of art and writing, with all its antagonisms, collaborations, and crossovers, shows a marked co-dependence. While the autonomy of the
art object has shown to be lacking in some instances, a far more complex relationship with language and writing has emerged in recent contemporary art practice. The emergence of a reflexive curatorial discourse seems in part the artists’ response to the increasing layers of communication possible through technology.

Critic and historian TJ Clarke wrote with caution and cynicism that our image-culture was replacing an experience of the world mediated by words. Yet Clarke’s gloomy prediction has so far been unwarrented—it appears that the word/image relationship is inextricable, dialectical, dogmatic and fecund.

Conversation, as a strategy employed in its most direct sense by prolific writers like Hans Ulrich Obrist, and by editors of out-of-the-mainstream journal/magazines such as The Happy Hypocrite’s Maria Fusco and Dot Dot Dot’s Stuart Bailey, has been led by inquisitiveness and a desire for experimentation and engagement in all forms of art writing.

This issue, MAP celebrates these complexities. Hans Ulrich Obrist’s interview with Jordan Wolfson retains the creative spontenaity of their recent conversation in New York. Dot Dot Dot’s MAP Commission, conversely, condenses a collection of ideas into a dense layering of ideas. The resulting essay in pictures and in words, builds a map of connecting thoughts and images, beautifully constructed on both aesthetic and study-friendly lines.

In this issue’s Report, Maria Fusco playfully introduces the notion that art writing has somehow been ‘born again’ into a new generation of young artists and art writers with some radical ideas on its purpose.

And, for the first time, MAP asks its readers to join its ongoing conversation by posing a set of questions on feminism. Replies will be posted on the MAP website.