Preview
Issue 4/2017
It is 45 years since the Club of Rome’s famous study, "The Limits of Growth", was published. With its emphatic warnings about the threat of natural resources running out and the catastrophic consequences of worldwide environmental destruction, the study made a decisive contribution to shaping ecological awareness and corresponding political movements. To sum up, almost half a century later little or nothing has been learnt from those forecasts. The "Global Limits" edition turns its attention to current symptoms and manifestations of this persistent ecological slope—such as those recently voiced in the Anthropocene discourse, or those manifest for quite some time in experimental forms of a non-instrumental earth-boundness. It also enquires how art, over and above apocalyptic doomsday scenarios, might deal with the undeniable limits to growth. What kinds of different conceptual models or new ecologies are currently emerging on this front—approaches that enable a more sharply focused view of growing global imbalances?
Date of publication: 15th October 2017
Issue 1/2018
Developments triggered by the advent of what are termed "social media" are in full swing, and no-one can yet foresee the ramifications this will have in a whole host of very different areas. The offshoots of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. have long encroached upon the art sphere, and have started to significantly influence not only reception but also production and circulation of art. That is more than reason enough to engage with the "sociality" and the networking reality occasioned by these media. Is the promise of democratisation inherent to these channels and outlets actually being fulfilled on the social level? Do these media help to generate a multi-perspective, and indeed critical, public sphere? Or do they contribute to increasingly pronounced fragmentation and segregation of incompatible public spheres? All these topics are explored in the "Asocial Media?" edition in the light of contemporary artistic practices.
Date of publication: 15th January 2018