︎︎︎

Editorial

“Love is a stranger, love is a battlefield, Liebe ist alles!” With this pronouncement, editors Frederik Luszeit and Laura Seidel first dedicated the third issue of re:visions to the topic of love. From the very beginning, the editorial team wanted to investigate love not just as a feeling or a feature of personal relationships, but also as part of larger social and economic structures. Love is not limited to monogamous relationships or heteronormative ideals, but exists in various forms, like kinship, friendship, desire, and lust. It is reflected—often in stereotypical ways—in marketing and pop culture. But what is love’s place in art?

The artistic practices presented in this issue stem from the 1970s to the present day. They reflect critical discourses on romantic love brought forward by philosophers, sociologists, and activists during this time span. In particular, feminist perspectives on love, which stress the link between public and private matters, informs this issue. Many of the presented artists base their work on personal experiences and relationships, engaging questions of intimacy and vulnerability from a subjective viewpoint, while negotiating or challenging prescribed social roles.

In line with these concerns, the Berlin-based artist Julie Legouez documents her private and romantic life as part of her evocative art practice. She points to the gap between pop cultural ideals and the reality of love by laying bare her own experiences of heartbreak, depression, and abuse. The cover of this issue features an archival file taken from her multi-media installation Aktenzeichen 512-261 AW//JL 22… (2022), in which she collected items pertaining to a break-up. In this issue’s portrait, Josefin Granetoft recounts the story behind the work in the context of Legouez’s confessional art practice.

Johanna Luisa Müller discusses the dynamics of heterosexual partnerships in performance-based works by Franz Erhard Walter, Marina Abramović/Ulay, and Pina Bausch. As Müller observes, many artists of the twenty-first century not only collaborate with their romantic partners, but make partnership itself the primary object of their practice. She examines the couples in the midst of power play, sometimes using each other, elsewhere relying on one another for mutual support. These case studies illuminate the relational structures of the art world and beyond.

A contrasting form of ‘love affairs’ is portrayed in Katrin Rollmann’s essay on the New York artist Rosemary Mayer (1943-2014), whose practice emerged in the 1970s from a network of female cooperation and support. Drawing on the book On Connection (2020) by poet and musician Kae Tempest, Rollmann presents Mayer’s work as a means to connect individual and communal histories, underlining art’s emancipatory potential for marginalised people.

In the third essay of this issue, visual artist Julia Sjölin expands on her video work Broken H: External Hard Disk Drive. In the eponymous text, the artist sketches episodes from her life and artistic process that centre around the accidental breakage of her hard disk. As Sjölin reflects on an array of related films and art works, as well as the relationship between time and heartbreak, medium and information, the lost data is imbued with new meaning.

Disconnected from the main topic of love, the issue also features reviews of the Manifesta Biennale in Pristina and Anouar Badaoui’s 2022 solo exhibition in Berlin by Victoria Hilsberg and Swantje Pieper, respectively.

We hope you enjoy reading our third issue.

Johanna Engemann
Josefin Granetoft

Contributions by
Josefin Granetoft
Victoria Hilsberg
Johanna Luisa Müller
Swantje Pieper
Katrin Rollmann
Julia Sjölin

Editors
Johanna Engemann
Josefin Granetoft
Carolin Greifenstein
Victoria Hilsberg
Frederik Luszeit
Swantje Pieper
Tobias Rosen
Laura Seidel
Meryem Özel
Yuanwen Zhong

Proofreaders
Sabrina Blembel
Johanna Engemann
Carolin Greifenstein
Corey Ratch
Laura Seidel
Swantje Pieper
Tobias Rosen

Website and graphic design
Julia Grüßing
Jérémy Landes

Social media
Swantje Pieper

Cover image
Julie Legouez, Aktenzeichen 512-261 AW//JL 22 (Denn du bist verrückt genug, um dich in dieser Welt zu verlieben. Aber die Welt ist viel verrückter als du und fast wär etwas von uns geblieben.), 2022. Photo: Sascha Rebrikov.

︎

︎︎︎

Editorial