“I announce the destruction of the cinema, the first apocalyptic sign of disjunction, the rupture of this bloated organism known as a film.” These forceful words emanated from loudspeakers in a monotone computer voice in the video installation Discrepancy, 2009–, the centerpiece of William E. Jones’s first solo show in Berlin. The text is not by Jones, however, but by Isidore Isou, the founding father of Lettrism, the radical literary and artistic movement now mainly remembered as a precursor to Situationism. And yet Isou’s manifesto-like call, taken from the film Traité de bave et d’éternité

Galleries often re-present works commissioned for other contexts, but rarely do they expand on them. This is precisely what’s been done, however, at Koch Oberhuber Wolff for its solo show by Clemens von Wedemeyer. “The Fourth Wall,” 2009, consists of nine videos and films conceived for London’s Barbican Art Gallery and exhibited there last year. Here this project was supplemented by photographs, wall texts, a sound document, and vitrines filled with books and a copy of National Geographic. The work’s thematic reference point is the story of the Tasaday, an ethnic group with only twenty-four

Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri have cited Fluxus artist Robert Filliou in his assertion that “art is what makes life more interesting than art” since initiating their collaboration in 1999. The two artists (who also maintain individual practices) consistently seek to fulfill this maxim, entertaining the possibility of a compelling and committed aesthetic practice that might adequately respond to the magnitude of historical events. In so doing, they have eluded conventional categories such as cultural activism or political engagement, using poetic disruptions and fragmentary discursive elements