Matthew Rana (b.1981/US) is an artist and writer living in Malmö, Sweden. His critical writing has appeared in Art Agenda, Camera Austria, Jacket2, OEI, and Frieze, among others, and he is a contributing editor to the Nordic art review Kunstkritikk. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam.
Beginning with the Situationists and continuing decade by decade into the present, Gregory Sholette provides a concise and, therefore, highly selective overview of case-studies drawn from a “phantom archive” of documents and “radical tropes” produced outside the realms of official culture.
Together with five invited authors and collectives, we want to think through issues surrounding criticism in relation to reproductive labour and acts of commoning. What is care within an art context, who practices it, who provides it, and to whom is it provided? How can art criticism better support artistic communities and improve material conditions and infrastructures for cultural workers? Is it possible – or indeed, desirable – to establish shared criteria and values? What are some of the risks involved in taking a critical position that prioritizes situatedness, intimacy, and well-being? Finally, what are the material and identitarian divisions that characterize our work as critics, and how do they impact us and our writing? These are just some of the questions we posed to ourselves and to the Malmö gathering's contributors.