A short piece on Mike Nelson after seeing his super intelligent Hayward retrospective "Extinction Beckons" back in April. I first met Mike in London in 2001, after seeing his incredible installation The Coral Reef, and have followed his work ever since, our paths intersecting every few years or so. This essay charts twenty years of my intense responses to one of his works in particular, MAGAZIN: Büyük Valide Han, which I first saw in Istanbul in 2003.

Information Overload! Research-Based Art

A preview of my next book in Artforum's April '23 issue. They rushed the pictures in the magazine and didn't consult me, so focus on the online version instead! The longer version will be out next year in Disordered Attention (Verso). NB interesting debate about the essay on Dieter Roelestraete's Instagram here.

Bocanegra Performance-Lecture

After a long pause with Artforum, I'm back. They invited me to write a Top 10 but I hadn't seen ten great things. Instead, they let me write about Suzanne Bocanegra's dazzling performance lecture (with Lili Taylor) at The Met back in February. It really stood out as a blinding example of the genre. Link here.

Free Your Mind

A speculative review of new MoMA, imagining what we'd see if they'd got it slightly more right. The piece was commissioned by Artforum but they killed it - because I co-authored with Nikki Columbus, who successfully sued MoMA PS1 for gender discrimination in 2019. In their eyes, this produced a "conflict of interest" and insufficient objectivity. Wow. We finally published it with n+1.

Missing Okwui

An obituary for Okwui Enwezor, on the Third Text website. Such a pleasure to spend time revisiting his catalogues, and to appreciate afresh the scale and ambition of his thinking. He is sorely missed.

The Art of Political Timing

The beginnings of an article about political timing specific art - a term taken from artist Tania Bruguera to describe a way of working at high speed, in response to current affairs, with an interventionist mentality. Published in the May issue of Artforum, with a somewhat disappointing layout and choice of photos. In my view the piece needs to be pushed further, and broadened out to encompass more examples of what political timing specific interventions might look like in the US.

Palace in Plunderland

A screed against NY performance venue The Shed, published in the September 2018 issue of Artforum. Working with actor Paul Lazar (in the image, left), I used this essay as the basis for a performance also titled 'Palace in Plunderland.' Paul delivered the lecture-performance at the Barnes Museum in October 2018, as part of Boris Charmatz's project Philadelphia Museum of Dance: Choreographing Public Assembly.

Black Box, White Cube, Grey Zone

A new article just appeared in the summer 2018 issue of TDR - "Black Box, White Cube, Grey Zone: Dance Exhibitions and Audience Attention" - which looks at the simultaneous rise of dance exhibitions and social media. It discusses (among others) Maria Hassabi, Xavier Le Roy, and Anne Imhof. The essay came out of a class I co-taught at the Graduate Center in spring 2016, and was given as a lecture in many places (Amsterdam, Lisbon, Montreal, Düsseldorf...), so many thanks to everyone who gave me feedback.

Against Digital Art History

In November 2015 I was invited to an interdisciplinary conference at the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University to talk about the methodological issues affecting my field, i.e. contemporary art history. I gave this paper, 'Against Digital Art History', which is now online here. #fhiFUTURES

Death Becomes Her

"Death Becomes Her: Maria Hassabi and the Museum" - an article on Maria Hassabi in issue 99 of Parkett, summer 2016.

Fischli and Weiss review

Review of Fischli and Weiss at the Guggenheim in the April 2016 issue of Artforum. I love their work, but it totally eludes verbal capture.

Danh Vo feature

'History Depletes Itself'

--> — a (long) article on Danh Vo's exhibitions at the Venice Biennale --> — has just appeared in the September 2015 issue of Artforum. It's a pretty boring introduction, but hopefully gets more interesting as it goes along.

Anne Teresa de Keersmaker

My 'best of' 2012, published in the December issue of Artforum, was seeing Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's Fase over and again at the Tanks (Tate Modern) last summer.

Digital Divide

A feature in the 50th anniversary issue of Artforum (September 2012), pp.434-441, dealing with contemporary art's simultaneous disavowal of, and dependency upon, the digital revolution. A link to the article is here. An extensive 'talkback' section on the Artforum website contains a ton of responses to the essay here.

Comment in The Guardian

A Comment column for The Guardian, taking its point of departure the Cultural Olympiad and Tino Seghal. NB I have nothing to do with the title and subtitle....

Unhappy Days in the Art World: De-skilling Theatre, Re-skilling Performance

An article on white cube vs black box performance, for the Brooklyn Rail's series of Al Held essays. It combines the outcome of last year's De-skilling seminars with my experiences co-curating Prelude.11 and being a judge of the Malcolm Award for Performa 11.

Visual art performance has since its inception sought to de-skill theatre, and this places artists in a difficult position when they are now invited to produce performance in a black box/proscenium setting. A link to the article is here.

Althamer feature

An essay on Polish artist Pawel Althamer, whose recent project Common Task has involved taking his neighbours on trips to Brasilia, Brussels and Mali, all the time wearing gold bodysuits. His idiosyncratic approach to collaboration invites us to devise idiosyncratic new criteria for analysing it. Artforum, February 2011.

Con-Demmed to the Bleakest of Futures

A hastily penned response to the UK government's cuts to culture and education, for e-flux journal #22 - a special issue reporting on the rise of the right in Europe, guest edited by Paul Chan and Sven Lütticken.

Delegated Performance: Outsourcing Authenticity

A Spanish translation of my essay on delegated performance, in revista Otra Parte (Argentina) no.22, Winter 2010-11. The full version will appear in my forthcoming book Artificial Hells (Verso, Spring 2011).

APG feature

A feature on the Artist Placement Group in the October issue of Artforum. Available online here. It's the short version of a chapter from my book, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship to be published by Verso in 2011.