Zach Kaiser presents his app CitationBomb, as well as his theory and practice of scrambling and hacking the contemporary metrics of academic success. In “overflowing the commodity market for citations,” Kaiser questions the value systems we assign to knowledge production and consumption
The 2017 film Through the Repellent Fence looks at Postcommodity’s practice and its relation to and divergences from Land art traditions. Emily Eliza Scott explores the film and the role of art along the US-Mexico border
Sara Reisman reflects on the ways in which artists and institutions consider (or disregard) how individuals with disabilities access their work
Huey Copeland and Krista Thompson sketch the concept of the afrotrope, a term they have developed over the past decade to describe “those recurrent visual forms that have emerged within and become central to the formation of African diasporic culture and identity”
By Risham Majeed and Elizabeth Rodini
Risham Majeed and Elizabeth Rodini discuss Majeed’s exhibition Made to Move: African Nomadic Design, the museological and curatorial challenges posed by the exhibition’s material, and the possibility of a decolonized museum space
Andrew Yang shares a “transdisciplinary cluster” of works that engage the concept of the Anthropocene. When it comes to climate change, Yang asks, “Which we is responsible, or most at risk? What sorts of people, organisms, and entities does we invite or exclude?”
By A.K. Burns and Melissa Ragain
In this annotated commentary, artist A.K. Burns and art historian and critic Melissa Ragain explore the script, performances, and citations in Burn’s video installation A Smeary Spot (2015), which is the first episode in her five-part Negative Space film cycle
By Nick Herman
Art Journal Open presents Medias Res by artist Nick Herman, which features Herman’s exploration of his artworks and texts related to his interests in static, rastering, layering, and other transmission processes. These interests have led Herman to create two new works to be viewed on Art Journal Open: Comm 1 (2017), which takes the shape of a unique and experimental pop-up GIF experience, and MERROR ERROR TERRIOR (2017), a downloadable image. “Static or noise as a record of transmission becomes its own reward, reflecting its innate complexity and, in the process, some greater truth about its origin.” Herman writes, “To me, the GIF does something similar, capturing the unpredictable rhythms and constituent raster of their source”
By Anna Craycroft
In “To Listen,” artist Anna Craycroft considers the role of the voice of the artist and reflects on her process of creating her exhibition Tuning the Room (Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, January 28–April 16, 2017) in relationship to her research into the archives of photographer Berenice Abbott for Craycroft’s exhibition The Earth Is a Magnet (Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, November 16, 2016–March 26, 2017). This is the second installment of Craycroft’s two-part series for Art Journal Open
By Caitlin Masley-Charlet
Caitlin Masley-Charlet speaks with artist Chad Stayrook about his experiences at artist residencies around the world, the effects that residencies have had his artistic practice, and the development of Present Company, the artist-run space in Brooklyn that he cofounded
By Marie Watt
Marie Watt first encountered Joseph Beuys’s work as a college student studying abroad. While working on an MFA at Yale, she wrote a reflection on the artist’s I Like America and America Likes Me from the perspective of Coyote, for a course taught by the art historian Romy Golan
By Camila Maroja
Camila Maroja reviews the exhibition and catalogue, Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium
