Issue 114
April 2008

This month in an issue of frieze themed around artists and social reality.

Artist Collier Schorr edits the disturbing images of Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov.

Nancy Spector proposes that our ‘reality’-crazed culture – whether in US presidential politics or in the possible recreation of Lyon in Dubai – is increasingly intertwined with fiction.

Mark Nash reflects on documentary and fiction in the age of aesthetics.

Kirsty Bell discusses the possibilities of exile and representation in the work of Emily Jacir, an artist who travels between the USA and Palestine. 

From this issue

David Alan Mellor (Hayward Publishing, London, 2008)

Richard Sennett (Allen Lane, London, 2008)

ed. Daniel McClean (Ridinghouse, London, 2007)

William S. Burroughs (Audio Research Editions, 2007)

Ivor Cutler (Hoorgi House Records, 2008)

Office for Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway

Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, USA

BY Joshua Simon |

Galerie Jan Mot, Brussels, Belgium

The message ‘this is not a museum’ hovered behind its moves

BY Steven Stern |

Centre International d'Art et du Paysage, Ile de Vassivière, France

What does it mean when artists create scenarios that rely on existing social realities, or when they actively enter a social realm in order to generate works of art?

BY Mark Nash |

Israeli artist Yael Bartana asks: ‘What is this place where I grew up?’

A new 16-disc DVD box set of Alexander Kluge’s films highlights the 30-year career of this influential German filmmaker, philosopher, author and media mogul

Ukrainian artist Boris Mikhailov has been documenting the inhabitants of his homeland for over 30 years. American artist Collier Schorr responds to his confrontational photographs by designing this layout and annotating his images

How we create architectural spaces that in turn define our social behaviour is a constant theme in the films of Clemens von Wedemeyer

The Troubles, Samuel Beckett, Joan of Arc, knitted club flyers and reconstructing the past

Stars, thunder and birdsong; transformation and translation

Pragmatic metaphysics, painstaking copies and infinite pedestals

Chopin, melancholy, pianos and slapstick

BY Jennifer Higgie |

With Emily Jacir’s solo show now on view at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (until 3 January 2016), re-read Kirsty Bell’s monograph on the artist from issue 114, April 2008

The social experiments Artur Zmijewski documents in his provocative videos reveal disquieting aspects of human nature

Isaac Julien is a filmmaker and artist. He curated the current exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, ‘Derek Jarman: Brutal Beauty’ (23 February – 13 April 2008), which features his new film Derek. His film installation Fantôme Afrique (2005) is also on show at the University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara until 11 May 2008.

So much criticism. So little time

Eli Broad, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the perils of philanthropy

Two recent plays suggest that artists make bad subjects for the theatre

Hillary Clinton's 'tears', fake gondolas and Lyon in the desert - is fiction the new reality?

BY Nancy Spector |

Recent years have seen a rise in panel discussions about the demise of art criticism - while the birth of the curator-critic has passed largely unremarked

No Country for Old Men's recent success at the Oscars heralds the return of the cowboy - a figure who, after decades of phenomenal popularity, had all but disappeared from the big, and small, screen

BY Mark Mordue |

In ‘Life in Film’, an ongoing series, frieze asks artists and filmmakers to list the movies that have influenced their practice.