Inside the Spiral: The Passions of Robert Smithson. By Suzaan Boettger. University of Minnesota Press, 2023. 440 pages.ASTONISHINGLY, it has taken fifty years since his death for a “life” of Robert Smithson to emerge. Then again, the endlessly polysemous nature of Smithson’s art, the vertiginous heap of writing on him already out there, and his own profound ambivalence toward the very enterprise of history collective and personal make him a rather daunting subject. The prospective Smithson biographer, over the winding course of her inquiry, must advance despite so many taunting aphorisms like
Border Crossings is a cultural magazine edited and published in Winnipeg. A local, international magazine, it is now in its 35th year of continuous publication. Edited by Meeka Walsh, it investigates contemporary culture through a combination of articles, reviews, interviews and portfolios of photographs and drawings.
The following diagrams redeploy the visual language of evolutionary histories of architecture to reveal the racial epistemologies that animated these discourses in the past.
Aria Dean is an artist who works in multiple media. Her interest in materialist and structural film has always been an intellectual base, and in her new film Abattoir, U.S.A.! she builds upon that base in ways that expand her creative practice. Dean speaks with McKenzie Wark about the connection between her earlier film and her newest piece, the importance of collaboration, and the challenges of being an artist who is also a noted writer.