May this first letter from us to you, dear reader, find you all well.

Although A PRIOR Magazine has been around since the joyfull year 1999 we have only now launched a totally fresh and alive website, and will from now on be sending you regular letters updating you with our activities and reflections on the world of art. [subscribe to newsletter]

Many reasons are to be found for this new development, the main one being that the magazine has many, too many, things that we want to share with you. So many people are involved in the making of the magazine these days that the two issues we produce in print each year are no longer a broad enough platform for all the creative, bright and important ideas of our collaborating artists, writers and curators. Although, yes, less is more, sometimes it’s nice to just let it flow.

This is why now our website not only has an e-log (editors log) where you and we can post comments, reflections and ideas, but will also have a creative section, “Now that you mention it” (to be foundunder ‘web projects’) where projects and texts not published in the magazine can be accessed.

We have also started a photo column, with pictures of the places, artworks, books, exhibitions, people, life, etc. sent to us by various contributors. The column will carry the name: “It’s Life Jim, but not as we know it” (to be found under 'forum') a quote from the majesterially stoic Mr Spock, of Star Trek fame.


So, what’s todays news then?

A PRIOR has published its second EXTRA issue:

EXTRA#02 PROPOSAL FOR DOCUMENTA12 IN 2007
OR, HOW WILLIAM BLAKE SAVED DOCUMENTA

Conceived and edited by Raimundas Malasauskas

A Prior Magazine EXTRA#02 will be presented and freely distributed at ArtBrussels (from 19 to 23 April 2007) and again on the occasion of documenta12 in Kassel—as well as anywhere A Prior goes!
The booklet was conceived, edited and produced by Raimundas Malasauskas (a member of our editorial board, among very many other things) and designed by Dexter Sinister. It constitutes a time-travelling-speculative-imaginary project for which 20 artists contributed a proposal, each for a chosen edition of documenta in past, present or future....

TO BE PRESENTED on 29 May 2007 at the Photographers Gallery in London



A PRIOR’s contribution to documenta 12 magazines

documenta12_magazines is set up as a collaborative project between more than 90 on- and offline (art)publications brought together by Georg Schöllhammer for documenta12. All Magazines were asked to reflect on the questions raised as Leitmotifs for this year’s edition directed by Roger Buergel. Although there is considerable confusion about it—and premeditated collaboration has not always functioned as is perhaps expected or wished—A Prior Magazine considers the documenta12 magazines project a compelling undertaking, not only because it connects hundreds of writers in an informal way, but also because it gives visibility to a vast spectrum of underground, often locally-based, work; and it is a true antidope to the highly institutionalised artworld. That this initiative is taken by what can be regarded as “The mother of all Institutions”, documenta, does worry us, but when we come to think of it, we're all inside this world, there is no way we could function or even be outside of it.

Over the next three months, A PRIOR Magazine presents two new regular issues besides the EXTRA issue, published today. They partially take their cue from the conceptual outlines of the documenta12 project.
Modernity? Our new antiquity? is the point of departure for A PRIOR Magazine #14, while A PRIOR Magazine #15 addresses issues and concerns implied in the notion of Bare Life. It is important to note that A PRIOR has not deviated significantly from its usual modus operandi—issues #14 and #15 are therefore not “Documenta specials” —instead, we used Documenta’s own mottos and areas of investigation and interest as filters or prisms through which we view the worlds of art and culture, from which A PRIOR continues to distill its content. We did take the opportunity to extend our activities, exchange articles and organise seminars and educational sessions and even entered into the process of producing an artistic web project with the young Swiss artist Raphael Julliard.


Modernity? Our new Antiquity?

On may 29th 2007 A PRIOR Magazine #14 will be launched at the Photographers’ Gallery in London along with apmextra#02 and introductions by Sven Augustijnen, Raimundas Malasauskas and Dieter Roelstraete (tbc).

APM #14 engages the work of Sven Augustijnen from Belgium, Joachim Koester from Denmark and Deimantas Narkevicius from Lithuania and takes documenta’s own leitmotif ‘Modernity is our Antiquity?’ as its binding element.
In his elaborative research on the colonial history of Congo AUGUSTIJNEN recalls the thin lines between truth and fiction, the manipulation of words and data, power structures and the ways in which media have always been entangeled in these.
By examining the position of Moïse Tshombe (1919-1969) who was a leading figure in post-colonial Congo, specifically in his responsibility in the secession-politics of the district of Katanga as well as his involvement in the murder of Lumumba who was the first prime minister of independent Congo, Augustijnen questions—albeit not without humour—ways in which reality is perceived and history is written and made.
Augustijnen' s project is based on magazine articles and covers (of Pourquoi Pas? and Special) both dating from the 1960s. A central figure in these magazines is the Belgian journalist and editor Pierre Davister.
Cast somewhere between reality and fiction, this docudrama reads like a mystery but should not be mistaken: it happened!
A second extensive part of A Prior Magazine #14 is devoted to a toponym that holds a special place in the history of modernity: Königsberg / Kaliningrad.
Joachim KOESTER travelled to the old city of Köningsberg together with curator and writer Anders Kreuger and literary critic and Kaliningrad expert Claudia Sinnig, and discovered that Kant’s beloved hometown was now covered with shopping malls and other marks of post-communist, capitalist influence. In response to this investigative enterprise by A Prior Magazine Koester elaborated his project The Kant Walks with new photographs. Belgian philosopher and contributor to the Königsberg / Kaliningrad project, Dieter Roelstraete and his partner, the Polish-Canadian writer and curator Monika Szewczyk, travelled to Russia to take in take in the 2nd Moscow bienale, stopping in Kaliningrad to escape life as we know it—all photos from their exhilirating trip to be found under “From Russia with Love”. Swiss artist Raphael JULLIARD is working on a new project Scheme Constructeur—soon to be presented on www.aprior.org/webprojects. Julliard took the term "scheme" from Kant's philosophy (in the third critique) in the aims of exploring the city "in order to find out a specific scheme for Kaliningrad, part of it would be the pseudo-cause of Kant's philosophy (a way to answer the question: how could a man that never left his city develop such a gigantic systematique?)".
In the third focal section of A PRIOR Magazine #14, Deimantas NARKEVICIUS retells the story of Solaris— Andrej Tarkovsky’s enigmatic 1971/2 film adaptation of the novel by futurologist Stanislaw Lem. Through his films, which evidence a rare mastery in addressing the contemporary and (recent) past, specific and the more abstract, as well as the wrangling of the economic and the socio-cultural condition, specifically in the former Eastern Bloc, Narkevicius questions the notion of modernity as our antiquity.


What About Life?

Roger Buergel has formulated another question for his documenta: (What is) Bare Life? As we view it, the two themes (modernity and bare life) overlap. A PRIOR has nevertheless chosen to address them seperately: an issue each! A PRIOR Magazine #15, made with Belgian artist Valerie Mannaerts alongside Martha Rosler and Allan Sekula, both US citizens, thus deals with this question of life; and will be launched at the opening of documenta12 in Kassel. .

With the rising popularity of Giorgio Agamben among today’s cultural producers and consumers, the notion of “bare life” has become something of an academic catchphrase, much like the “multitude” of yesteryear. The global currency of this concept—invoking images of refugee camps in Darfur and slum life in Gaza, of sweat shops in the Philippines and prison life in the US—tends to obscure the brute facts of its continuing existence in less likely locales that are much closer to home; however: there is much “bare life” to be found in today’s wealthiest countries, and the spectre of the “camp” —the site par excellence, according to Agamben, where life is stripped to its barest essentials—surely haunts many of these countries’ less publicized socio-political failures. (Dieter Roelstraete)

MANNAERTS presents ‘signs of life’ in the sense of vitality, energy, life force and protracted experiment with organic form—a life that is not strictly human but also animal, monster and substantiated ‘ghost’. Although not obvious at first, her project may also be aligned with the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben, but more in the sense of ‘bare life’ as the productively undifferentiated space between animals and humans which he explores in The Open. The critical, cultural and socio-political explorations of both ROSLER and SEKULA address and implicate the theme of life from/in the context of global perceptions of ‘communal life. In their work, we read both questions about the possibility of, as well as opportunities or models for the civic engagement via artistic praxis. It is with considerable pride that A prior Magazine presents Martha Rosler’s series “Bringing the War Home” accompanied by an extensive conversation with Dieter Roelstraete, and gives an in depth view of Allan Sekula’s project made for documenta 12: Shipwreck and Workers –version 3 for kassel (2007), with an in depth analysis of his oeuvre and his presence in Kassel this summer, by Hilde Van Gelder from the KULeuven, Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography and Visual Studies



Educate me!

The third thematic question concerning documenta12 'Education, what is to be done?' has inspired A Prior to actualize a seminar series and on-line project in the belief that pedagogy is a practice first and foremost. In collaboration with three art schools, NABA (Milan), Kunsthochschule (Kassel) and Kask (Ghent) A Prior invited contributors to the above mentioned activities to enter into dialogue with students, who will thereafter proceed to present their own reflections and ideas in the form of a proposal—inspired perhaps by William Blake, the content of A Prior and documenta12—on this website.

AT: NABA Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano; on the recent past, the former Eastern bloc, memory and place, and Modernity as our Antiquity; with Deimantas Narkevicius

AT: Kunsthochschule Kassel, on Documenta, Modernity and How William Blake Saved Documenta, with Raimundas Malasauskas

AT: KASK department of University College of Art and Design, Ghent, on Modernity, Marx, and Brussels, with Sven Augustijnen

Special thanks to: Deimantas Narkevicius, Raimundas Malasauskas, Sven Augustijnen, Marco Scotini, Bjørn Melhus, Wim de Temmerman, and the students. General coordination: Andrea Wiarda


Are you ready for the country? [Belgian news]

Saturday 21 April 2007 at Art Brussels:
17:00 The Role of Brussels in the Network of Biennials discussion with Bart De Baere (Director MuHKA); Anselm Franke (Artistic Director Extra City and co-curator of the first editition of the Brussels Biënnale); Katerina Gregos (Artistic Director Argos and co-curator of the first editition of the Brussels Biënnale); Hans Ulrich Obrist (Co-Director Serpentine Gallery, London and co-curator Lyon Biennial 2007); Trevor Smith (Independent curator New York, On-site Manager of the Bienniale of Sydney 1992-1993); Raimundas Malasauskas (writer, curator and contributing editor A Prior).
Moderated by Barbara Vanderlinden (artistic director and co-curator of the first editition of the Brussels Biënnale)

Wednesday 18 April 2007 Honoré d'O at KIOSK, Ghent:
19:00 to 21:30 Opening of a project by Honoré d'O
Exhibition runs from 19 April to 27 May 2007 open daily from 9:00 to 18:00

Best wishes, A Prior Editorial Team


A Prior Magazine is supported by: The Ministery of the Flemish Community, University College Ghent, department of Visual Arts and Design, The Advertisers; Support for APM#15: KULeuven, Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography and Visual Studies.