Mikkel Krause Frantzen – Going Nowhere Slow

#1 min Laura Amann

16. 6. 2021

Mikkel Krause Frantzen. Going Nowhere Slow: The Aesthetics and Politics of Depression. Ropley: John Hunt Publishing, 2019. ISBN 9781789042146
Mikkel Krause Frantzen. Going Nowhere Slow: The Aesthetics and Politics of Depression. Ropley: John Hunt Publishing, 2019. ISBN 9781789042146
#39 Delight, PainBook ReviewPsychology

Exploring the psychopathology of depression in the Western world, Mikkel Frantzen forcefully demonstrates how even if the usual discourse maintains that depression is something personal it is in fact mercilessly driven by external factors and therefore a collective responsibility. Well versed in the performance of happiness, because being unhappy would be immoral, we suffer the multiple injuries of capitalism. In GoingNowhere Slow, Frantzen explores this feeling of “abortion of the future” through four cultural works and in so doing achieves a convincing Zeitdiagnose that declares depression to be the pathological mirror of contemporary capitalism.

Text: Laura Amann

#39 Delight, PainBook ReviewPsychology SocietyPoliticalNarrativeTherapyDelight, pain

Laura Amann

is a curator and architect living and working in Vienna. Currently she is a curator at Kunsthalle Wien alongside the WHW collective. Amann is the co-founder of Significant Other, a project space and curatorial platform concerned with the overlaps of art and architecture. More recent projects look at madness and insanity as forms of knowledge, and sensuality and how they produce spaces for disobedience.  

#39 Delight, Pain

e feel like revising our relationships. This time, relationships between people. Relationships between genders whose borders are not as firm as we might have thought until recently – instead, they are entirely permeable. Society responds to non-binary or transformative identities in various ways: with sexism, vehement exclusion, hidden exclusion, glass ceilings or attempts at inclusion. The proportion of these forces is constantly developing and changing and we decided to focus on them, and not alone. We opted for an experiment, and invited, as guest editors, the collective of the studio of New Aesthetics at the Department of Photography at FAMU, Prague: Nikol Czuczorová, Nikolaj Jessen, Andrej Kiripolský, Zuzana-Markéta Macková, Tobias Páral, Ezra Šimek, Leevi Toija, Max Vajt and Hynek Alt with Jen Kratochvil. This collaboration broadened our perspective to include the age group of those currently studying. Together, we arrived not only at the result of the printed issue but also at a new form of digital content – a series of podcasts and videos. Our guests helped sensitize and materialize the themes depicted on the mental map they created when conceiving the issue, lobbying for a revision of our established perception of the selected aggregate that forms the backbone of the magazine’s content: pleasure, pain, chaos, jouissance, anxiety, responsibility, orgasm, non-binary language, activism, perversion, social experiment. The chain of association can continue as you browse the pages of the magazine or listen to the podcasts, whose considerable ambition is to use the spoken word to discuss visual art. It will be delight accompanied by pain – otherwise it would not be delight at all.

Robert Gabris – Acts of Provocation and Self-Protection or the Power of Prohibition and Taboos

#2 min Laura Amann, Robert Gabris

Robert Gabris – Acts of Provocation and Self-Protection or the Power of Prohibition and Taboos

#48 About MeProfileLGBTQ+

Robert Gabris’ practice confronts viewers with a provocative exploration of domesticity, queer identity, and societal marginalisation. Keenly aware of the dangers of exoticisation and institutional exploitation, Gabris navigates the complexities of representing Roma life while paying homage to his culture, family, and their lived experiences. This strategic artistic endeavour confronts the harsh realities of systemic discrimination and neglect faced by Roma citizens, while also interrogating notions of inclusivity and identity politics as well as ways of giving back to Roma people instead of providing mere representation.

Diana Souhami – No Modernism Without Lesbians

#3 min Laura Amann

Diana Souhami – No Modernism Without Lesbians

#39 Delight, PainBook ReviewHistory

Paris’, Gertrude [Stein] said, ‘was where the twentieth century was’, ‘the place that suited those of us that were to create the twentieth-century art and literature”. It is in this Paris of the interwar period that Diana Souhami portrays those that, according to her, contributed con-siderably to the inception of Modernism and yet have been time and again written out of history: lesbians. An experienced biographer, Souhami, in this publication juxtaposes “the lives of four women within the lesbian category”. Much more than a mere biography, this book is a complex convolute of facts, stories and quotes densely woven into one another. Similarly, the ‘lesbian category’ only functions as an envelope for a colorful bouquet of women that love women in an inexhaustible variety of arrangements.