#first was abt warwick

[mybeautifulwifearcane]

im lowkey loving how every sneak peek has been about zaunite characters so far

[thvanatos]

arcane predictions!!! but mostly kaz's unintelligible rambles

no like now that we're done with act 1 i kinda wanted to get in on the fun of like guessing esp because i KNEW the enforcer act would backfire immediately spoilers duhhhhh

isha or maddie is gonna die bc like. the tropes are right there.

someone said that ambessa is gonna be the final boss villain and idk if thats league lore im missing out on, someone pls enlighten me

loving ambessa btw the reveal that she was behind the 'attack' during the memorial fucking GENIUS

bc it was kind of a breaking point of the dark caitlyn arc!!

vi pitfighting arc next which im sad about bc like wdym i gotta watch my girl going THRU it

i mean this is a stretch but heimerdinger,,, bro defo has a bigger part to play right

yk like all of this has got me thinking abt the ending bc it cant be something like and they band together and live happily ever after!!! its gotta have some major casualty

so im kinda expecting it ... either vi... or jinx...

i love the vi is caitlyns weakness trope - it happened in s1 and remember how ambessa exiled mel bc she weakened her think THAT and cait being ambessas target and cait cutting off vi... would love to see it more in play.

jinx doing smth sacrificial bc girl has zero self preservation skills

SPEAKING OF JINX

i love the shift in perspective bc s1 felt like we were watching it from jinx first person pov and rn it feels like jinx third person and also her saying 'its so quiet now'

her character arc seems to be taking the hero's path which is so cool!!!!!!!!!!

that guy... yk the enforcer guy who left when cait was declared leader... who tf is that guy

ALSO WHO IS WARWICK SORRY I DONT KNOW LEAGUE LORE SOMEONE EXPLAIN BC WHAT IM SEEING IS... WORRYING...

ekko badass moment

i have NO idea whats gonna happen w viktor but jayvik nation i extend my condolences

yk idk how theyre gonna add more lore - if theyre gonna add more lore bc act 1 lays down the foundation, sets the scene, everything else builds up from here na. just fascinated on where its going frfr.

okay yeah i know this is not very predictions but wtv wtv i just wanted to say ik people say the pacing felt off but it felt perfect to me tbh - keeping in mind i finished my s1 rewatch last night - it felt like elements sorta clicking into piece, yk? the cogs of a machine taking their places.

thats all i can think of for now, lmk ur thoughts!!!!!111

[mariabrightmoon]

Arcane angsty theory

What if Vander end up killed by both his daughters ?

First by accident by Powder

Then by Vi who won't recognise him in Warwick and think its just a monster on the scientist side.

Pls how angsty would it be? Now it's more a personal AU than a theory ig cause I don't think it ll happen

So if there s a fanfic like that, pls tell me

Especially that:

role inversion in arcane

It's really interesting when character inverted roles and positions, something I love doing to my OCs (sorry Aki</3 )

We know by teasers that Vi ll join enforcers which means undercity ll probably see her as a traitor. In conclusion, she loose them.

Plus she ll never really fit in Piltover, especially if she refuses to obey (like refuses to fight Jinx or Ekko)

Which means she ll end up misfit and alone... exactly like Powder was.

Which reminds us of when teen Vi used to say "one day, this city s gonna respect us" in season 1 arc 1.

Now it hit even harder knowing Vi s potential as a teen. Its like this high achieving tkid trope that happens to us all neurodivergents irl

Like saw those on tiktok

Now the question is: how jinx end up as a symbol, a hero? And how she changed?

I saw a loooot of people expecting Jinx to get even more destructive in season 2 (that she s fully jinx now, that powder in her was totally gone)

But given how Zaunites depict Jinx, it looks like the total opposite:

First we got a litteral structure of her

Then the mural from the teaser video that we still don't know who did it but clearly see she has followers dying their blue like her :

It s not just abt followers. Jinx is allowing strangers to touch her when she clearly flinched at physical touchs in season 1 due to ptsd

So s2 ll be about Jinx healing

Now there s also this depiction of Jinx where:

She is surrounded by white colombes in contrast to her association with black crows and ravens in season 1

She s in a historical pose

She s drawn next to Vander

Role inverse again: now Jinx is seen as Vander s heir instead of Vi

Ofc in contrast to:

[albatris]

happy sts!

i've been listening to your a rental car takes a left down rake street and disappears playlists and i'm loving it! would you like to talk about wip it is for?

writblr: @vsnotresponding

hiii happy storyteller saturday!! thanks for the ask :D

yay I'm glad you're enjoying the tunes! the story is the first in a trilogy about a freshly-turned body horror mode vampire and an equally monstrous human bastard on their quest to kill the giant vampire hivemind known only as 'the Garble'!

the blurb for the first book is as follows:

Schizotypal loner Nat Finch leaves work one afternoon, and the next thing he knows, he's waking up on the side of the road covered in dirt with no memory of the past ten days. All attempts to return to regular life are quickly thwarted - whatever happened to him during his blackout has left him morphing into something strange and monstrous.

When his new condition reaches a bloody, ravenous breaking point, a human stranger steps in: Quinn Cooper, powerful and dazzling manipulator with a cruel streak, here to mitigate the damage and offer Nat safety under their wing... as long as Nat does exactly as he's asked and doesn't ask questions.

:3

other important characters include Alex Anders, rigidly moral vampire lawyer having ten existential crises at once, Yvonne Tozier, cheery video game fanatic full of barely-contained simmering fury (she works customer service, you get it), and Zeke Cunningham-Warwick-Lâm, romance novelist by day, vampire hunter by night, and full-time weird psychic, who desperately needs to stop burning herself out every other week and practice some self-care

I'm most excited abt my vampire worldbuilding! vampirism as a condition is sentient, it's one being spread throughout many different bodies..... the life force gathered by the many vampires flows to the centre of the hivemind to give it eternal life while the vampires themselves are left with mere scraps

the story itself is full of queerness and body horror and my barely contained rage abt existing as a disabled person under capitalism

n yeah! that's about all!

[rosetyphooon]

hey guys ramble time bc i needto ramble and i am very very afraid of bothering others also maybe spoilers idk so here we go yippee but ohhh my god arcane i am freaking out i am quaking in my boots i am shaking with joy i am in a fucking state of pure bliss i am so excited for season 2 omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg obviously theres going to war n shit like no duh but i cant eait for the super epic cool battle between jinx and vi like thats gonna be epic and all the etasers arggg i love picking them apart idc if im reading into them toomuch i love them anyways for starters i love the way its all connecting like i am a sucker for the way everything is coming to tgoether n shit like in the teaser where we see vi and cait together preparing for war you can notice all these small little details that are actually from their leagues skin (caitlyn wearing a skirt n the collar thing or wtvr and vi having the big ass jacket collar and random ass pink ruffle on her waist) so thats super duper amazing cool epic yes also in the teaser trailer theres a small snippet where i think theres viktor and hes using hextech (i might be wrong it might not be viktor but who cares) to start his lil revolution thingy majigy so YIPPEE also in the teaser trailer vi is wearing claggors goggles such a cte detail to me starst sobbing teehee anywas i love ambessas part in this and even tho i dont have much to say abt her rn i hope she has a big part in the whole war thing!! also theres gonna be so much war ik s1 was gonna getting us prepared for all the war like theres a bunch of things in s1 that all signal war is abt to happen and yippe fictionalwar my favoruite slash joke ALSO SEVIKA oh my god sevika in the trailer she fired jinxs gun???? whaaaat?????? plus theres a shot where you can kinda see her arm (robotic one) and its brand new and looks to be designed and graffitied on by jinx which is super interesting like perhaps some jinx and sevika stuff??? do they get along??? so excited so so so very excited for that i love sevika guys also the painted mural of jinx is super interetsing to me especially since its shown right after we see ekko andohhh mygod vander is warwicklike ik we knew that months ago but oohhh my goodddddd big werewolf gonna fuck his daughter upfor kinda switching to piltover over zaun (pls warwick and vi fightscene i'll do anything) okay enough rambling for me i'll probably reblog and add more whenever i feel more need to ramble abt how much i love arcane YIPPEEE forgot to mention it but the fucking poster image wtvr of the rverse jinx holding vi is super cool to me bc unlike the first one where vi was looking away while powder was looking directly at the camera now they both face the camera and vi has this terrified look on her face and ughewsdjfejsdf GUYS!!!!!! i have so much to say!!!!!!!!! most of this was just me rambling abt all the teasrer but get ready for theories and analyings soon /hj

also heres a link to the arcane twitter account fi you would like to see all these teasers urself -> arcanes twt

[camojacketrobbincornerstores]

GUESS WHO’S BACKKKKKK

THE NEW VI CLIP!!!!!

TIME TO TALK ABT HER NUMEROUS HALLUCINATIONS IN THIS CLIP

Do I think they’re stylistic and to make a point of just how much she’s suffering? Yes!

Buuuuut I also wanna note they’re in the same form Vi hallucinated in season one.

Jinx has these deformed corpses with child-like drawings over them haunting her and we can almost always physically see just how painful they are or something of the sort.

Vi never (as far as I can find) has that over her hallucinations

There are scenes where she does have that scratchy Jinx effect like during her fight with Sevika (same scene as the above image btw) but for the most part she just she’s them like they are naturally there.

NOW TIME TO GET TO THE NEW CLIP

Vi is almost constantly hallucinating Caitlyn in this clip (and possibly her sister too)

She sees her face over others, reacts to her and interacts with her.

Both Jinx and Vi seem to have a consistency in hallucinating the people they miss and believe are gone for good (saying believe bc of Vander/Warwick)

Why Cait is screaming at her in this clip? Don’t know!! Wait for the show to come out!!

However I can make some theories that go along with our current topic.

Jinx, as far as we know, experiences almost constant judgmental and critical thoughts with very few times of normalcy or calm conversation.

I think Vi is the opposite

Every hallucination Vi had in season 1 is either a memory or supportive words from those who love her.

This is the first time we are ever seeing a voice treat her with any form of judgement/anger. It’s safe to assume their breakup did NOT go well.

NOW

THE QUESTION I SEE RUNNING THROUGH THE ARCANE FANDOM

Is this real Jinx or a hallucination??

While watching the clip for the first time I believed it was a hallucination due to the fact we were seeing one following her already (Caitlyn)

But the more other fans point things out the more I lean toward the idea that this is the real Jinx.

This hallucination interacts with the environment even when Vi’s not looking. As a matter of fact, Vi is never looking when Jinx appears nor does she react to her.

Like she doesn’t know she’s there.

With all this it feels a lot like Jinx really is there, and it could make sense seeing as this is confirmed to be act 2 (after their first fight) so this could be a moment of reconciliation??

Also could be the answer to another question in this clip,

Who brought Vi home when the guy stopped?

(Also a possible tiny parallel to the last time she dragged Vi out of a bar?)

HOWEVER, while I am for this theory I gotta play devils advocate too.

The only argument I have for Jinx being a hallucination is this

“But she’s interacting with the environment even when Vi doesn’t know! That’s what you said!” AND THATS WHAT I BELIEVE!!!

However, this could but used to argue that she is a hallucination as well.

This is Jinx *supporting* Vi as far as we know.

She is voting for her to win.

Another supportive hallucination, one trying to keep her alive, keep her fighting.

“When all the colors were black. You’re the reason I’m still alive.” In Jinx’s words.

ALRIGHT THATS ALL I GOT FOR NOW ADD MORE IDEAS IF YOU HAVE ANY PLSS

I have a theory that means absolutely nothing

If we are to think of Jinx’s hallucinations (both visual and auditory) as a clinical thing and something that was developed by her trauma is it that far fetched to believe Vi could develop it as well?

I was thinking about Jinx’s hallucinations which led me back to thinking about the scene where Vi hallucinates baby Powder. Now, maybe this was a stylistic choice to show the memories and guilt Vi was dealing with (which it 100% was my theory holds no substance) but as I was think about it I realized we never see any other characters have flashbacks like this. We see almost the entire cast’s backstories and memories but none of them hallucinate their past or people from it. Only Vi and Jinx have this stylistic choice used on them. Now about the “stylistic choice” idea. We know Jinx’s hallucinations are so much more than stylistic choice. She talks to them, they react to the events in her life, she hears them, sees them. Jinx’s hallucinations are an in-world thing not just a stylistic choice. Vi also talks to her hallucination of baby Powder. It’s one sentence and it’s dismissed but it happened. “I shouldn’t have left you..”

TO ADD ON

Both hallucinate the faces of others in place of the real people in front of them. AGAIN never happens to any other character!!

Anyways!! This is likely just a bunch of scrambled nonsense but it makes sense to me and I wanted to share my thoughts!!

[d1ssc0urse]

YOU WATCHED ARCANE!!!!! IM LOSING MY MIND THINKING ABT IT RIGHT NOW.

I didnt think it was gonna be that good but aajdjfkktkskdn it's. Incredible.

I can't stop thinking about the end of episode 3. The combo between Silco DEFINITELY (I think) seeing himself in Powder but also his desire to manipulate her......... im going crazy

IKR?? when i first saw you reblog smth about viktor and jayce i thought “no that can’t be my viktor and jayce” so i checked the ops tags lmao

ahh i knowww they’re so good at building tension!! idk how much you know of league lore in general but i lowkey think they’re gonna turn vander into warwick

i hope this show does well because i absolutely love league lore and really wanna see a show about darius and draven too tbh

[richmond-rex]

Reverse unpopular opinion ask meme: hmmmmmm Perkin Warbeck? 😂

Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme: send topics and instead of salt or hot takes, I MUST talk abt something I like about it.

Okay, so I lowkey want to kill you <3 and the vaccine is acting up and I’m feeling as though someone hit me with a car and shattered my bones into smithereens, so here goes my answer: I love how much of a freaking mess Warbeck was?? If you ever feel bad or frustrated because your life is a mess, or believe you made poor life choices think about Perkin Warbeck. No wonder people mocked him and there were even some ballads going around after his attempted landing on the Kent coast in 1495: 'sundry roundellis & songis to his shame & derision.' First, he proclaimed himself to be one of Richard III's bastards, realising it didn't exactly help his claim he took to calling himself Edward of Warwick, then again realising that claim could be easily disproven, he finally started to proclaim himself Edward IV's second son, Richard of Shrewsbury.

That attempted landing on Kent that I mentioned? Warbeck fled the scene because the populace threw him back — common people, not even an army, slaughtered around three hundred of his men. He fled the scene and tried to step foot in Ireland and he had to flee and lost men again (p.s.: the Irish called him 'the French lad', perhaps aptly as it is quite possible he was a ploy invented to threaten Henry VII at the time he was at war with France). Warbeck finally found refuge with James IV in Scotland who gave him an army and a wife, and sent him south to engage in battle with the English, and Warbeck fled the scene yet again. Apparently, James was so furious to see him back at his court that he is reported to have shouted that he couldn't believe Warbeck was King of England. When Warbeck finally managed to land somewhere in England — Cornwall, who was already up in arms against Henry VII — he lost his nerve yet again, deserted his army and fled.

Do you ever think you're in your flop area? Once Warbeck left Burgundy he never left his ❤️x

[homokommari]

what do you think about the atom cats?? they are one of my favorite little factions in four and I wish the game had used them more

i didnt answer this right away but i've been thinking abt them and why i love them and it's so many reasons!!

just like first of all, they are fun. just silly and fun inclusion in the game.

i love that they are like doing their own thing, a cohesive group, but they arent insular, they interact with the outside world, talk to u and help u even if u arent in their group. they help the warwicks for example. and the warwicks are ofc one of my fav settlements bc of the institute seed quest.....

this is a total side ramble but i hate kellog, i hate how the main quest throws in an alcoholic abusive dad to a serial killer. not the rep i really want as a child of an abusive dad who was also an alcoholic. :/ and the warwick family is the Not Realistic but Feels Good, it feels good to me. it warms my heart to see a family heal from trauma of abuse and alcohol abuse, experiencing having a good husband and father.

and im sure the atom cats were all very happy for them too. :>

i also love that they have poetry night, yess, support that artistic self expression <3

[fxggotclown]

i dont remember if i ever posted this on tumblr but when i was watching arcane for the first time last year i was watching it w my friend who had already watched it but who isnt familiar w the lore outside of arcane and every time someone used shimmer i would get really excited and yell "OMG IS THAT MUNDO?? IS THAT DR MUNDO????" bc at that point all i really knew abt zaun outside of the main characters of arcane (and blitzcrank) was that mundo existed and also janna i think . anyway every time i see anything i think is related to warwick i get sooo excited and im like "IS THAT WARWICK IS THAT MY BABY GIRL????"

if i cant have blitzcrank in arcane season 2 then i can at least enjoy warwick in arcane season 2 to the fullest

[porcileorg]

A conversation about Kunstverein München’s group show ‘Not Working – Artistic production and matters of class’ (2020-09-12 – 2020-11-01)

Conversants: The Bensplainer, Magda Wisniowska, and Victor Sternweiler [talking on Skype, in the evening of Nov 11, 2020.]

Victor: We should start our conversation about Kunstverein München’s show ‘Not Working – Artistic production and matters of class,’ [online through 2020-11-22] curated by Maurin Dietrich and Gloria Hasnay, while making clear that we were not able to attend the parallel program, consisting of tours, lectures, performances, and video screenings, which were partially screened online, and an extensive reader was published too. This will simply be a conversation about the actual show. One could claim that such a review can’t do justice to the whole project, but I claim that nobody was able to attend everything, except for the makers, so one can only have a fragmented take on it, and therefore it is legitimate to, mainly or solely, talk about the work installed in the space. 

Exhibition consisted work by Angharad Williams, Annette Wehrmann, Gili Tal, Guillaume Maraud, Josef Kramhöller, Laura Ziegler and Stephan Janitzky, Lise Soskolne, Matt Hilvers, Stephen Willats.

A film screening series selected by Nadja Abt, showing work by Adrian Paci, Agnès Varda, Ayo Akingbade, Barbara Kopple, Berwick St Collective, Laura Poitras and Linda Goode Bryant, Max Göran.

A single event screening with films selected by Simon Lässig.

Accompanying program consisting of a book presentation (Düşler Ülkesi) by Cana Bilir-Meier (in conversation with Gürsoy Doğtaş), lectures by NewFutures, Ramaya Tegegne, Tirdad Zolghadr and a publication presentation (Phasenweise nicht produktiv) from a collaboration by Carolin Meunier and Maximiliane Baumgartner.

The reader containing contributions by Annette Wehrmann, Dung Tien Thi Phuong, Josef Kramhöller, Laura Ziegler and Stephan Janitzky, Leander Scholz, Lise Soskolne, Mahan Moalemi, Marina Vishmidt and Melanie Gilligan, Steven Warwick.

Exhibition documentation: https://artviewer.org/not-working-artistic-production-and-matters-of-class/

Magda: To help, I was rereading today the booklet accompanying the exhibition, although I don’t see how the text is really going to address what we see in the actual Kunstverein space. For example, I quote, “The works on view are characterized by a consciousness of how background, socialization, education, and artistic practice are inevitably entangled. They hence allow for a consideration of these categories in relation to the actual lived realities of their producers.” Does it mean that the artists somehow reflect their own social background? Autobiographically on their own lived reality? Well, by large, they don’t. We don’t know what social background these artists are coming from.

Victor: How would you know anyhow?

Magda: Instead, the coherency of the exhibition relies on going through all the positions which were outlined in the booklet’s introduction. So, Stephen Willats investigates the historical aspect of class, Annette Wehrmann performs the interrogation of the economic model, Josef Kramhöller’s is a more personal approach to consumerism, Gili Tal tackles gentrification and cosmopolitanism, and Angharad Williams addresses the performative and fashion , and so on. And at least two of the artists are no longer alive.

Victor: In the time of Covid, where you try to make ends meet, how can you say no? What I’m trying to say is that the precariousness of their class is testified also by artists not being able to nowadays refuse to participate in an exhibition in which they potentially don’t think they fit in. They do it, plain and simple.

The Bensplainer: I don’t think it is due to Covid. It’s a general trend. If you're invited by the artistic director of the Venice Biennale, whatever their exhibition idea is, you participate, as an artist. It’s not anymore the time when an Alighiero Boetti could angrily refuse an invitation by Harald Szeemann.

Magda: Is that really the central problem of this exhibition? There are a lot of problematic issues, and I am now again looking at the text, especially at the end, where it states that “today the question of class is not addressed anymore.” That is completely untrue. Much of postmodernism consisted precisely of the critical inquiry into questions of class. I don’t know about you, Bensplainer, but in my time in London we had to read a lot of Bourdieu, especially his idea concerning cultural capital.

The Bensplainer: Jameson was my lighthouse at that time!

Magda: It was a big thing! You can’t say really the topic had been ignored since then.

The Bensplainer: Especially after the last Documenta in 2017. 

Magda: I acknowledge that the question of class is no longer about a white male perspective, defined by simple economics. But really? What does this exhibition add to this conversation? 

The Bensplainer: I think that the main problem here is when you set up a thematic exhibition. If you, as a curator, have some aprioristic ideas about the specific interpretations on cultural work, then you tend to apply them to your own exhibition making. Although, you tend to lose contact with the works themselves. You tend to look more at the anecdotal parts of the work and at its processes. Let’s be honest, there are no great works in the exhibition, the ones being able to question your own vision of forms and of the world in which these forms happen.

Magda: I think the older works displayed here, as Stephen Willats’ ones, from the 1980s, present some problems: they are, in fact, historical, and at that time had a certain currency, whereas they seem today …

The Bensplainer: … nostalgic.

Magda: And dry as well: this kind of class idea, of people living in a housing block – like he documented and interviewed – it doesn’t seem relevant anymore. The other thing is that it seems so British, so entwined in that specific culture. We know this Monty Python sketch, right? This kind of satire, for example, wouldn’t fit German society at that time, I think.

Magda: The other thing I was thinking of, while walking through the exhibition, was Pulp’s ‘Common People.’ (1995) Did anyone think of that? The song is about a girl from the upper classes, who wants to behave as being from the lower. But she never achieves that, because she always has her rich daddy in the background. I think that a potential problem this exhibition faces is of glamorizing this kind of a working-class cliché.

Victor: That song is especially ironic, as it was brought to my attention by a friend that Danae Stratou, the artist, industrialist heir and wife of Yannis Varoufakis, is the subject of that song. 

Magda: Yes, that’s why I mention it. 

Victor: I had a chat with The Bensplainer at some point and we had concerns about the installing too. It seemed, we agreed, like an art fair show display. The question is: how do you display all these works like a survey of an idea?

Magda: It is about all the artistic positions that the text referred to. As I said before.

The Bensplainer: If you see such an exhibition, you might consider how it fits a piece of writing, it being a master or a PhD thesis. On the other hand, it really lacks the viewer’s possibility to freely interact with the works. In other terms: how could you translate an idea for an exhibition, if the exhibition itself follows a logocentric and rational process? There is no surprise, indeed: I wanna see something, I don’t wanna learn something. 

Victor: This is a kind of philosophy made clear by the exhibition makers: what can art do and how it can utilize itself, in order to convey politics?

The Bensplainer: Do you mean how art can be utilitarian?

Victor: Let’s say you have a curatorial agenda, or an hypothesis: art-making as a precarious condition. And then you, as an exhibition maker, attempt to visualize that. In this sense, these works witness this very aspect, like art illustrating an intellectual point of view.

Magda: Otherwise said, either it is the work that is convincing, or the hypothesis. Right now, it doesn’t seem to be either. About the works I don’t wanna say much, but the text, its arguments can be easily dismantled. In many places, it is simply not coherent. For example, why do you state in the exhibition text that the coronavirus pandemic is what makes visible the rise of social inequalities the exhibition addresses, and then you show works from the 1980s? It makes no sense.

The Bensplainer: Works from the 1980s which recall works from the 1960s.

Magda: Exactly! If you were really consistent with your method, you would research the topic, then find out who’s working with it now. Not the artists who kind of work with the idea… just a little bit, so that they can fit your curatorial idea.

Victor: On the behalf of the curators: why should you do a show like that? What are their motivations?

Magda: Of course, you can do a show addressing the notion of class. There’s nothing wrong about that. Even if it were an illustration of ideas, it could work. But you need a good thesis first, while here the positions that are supposed to illustrate it, are weak. Who liked Laura Ziegler and Stephan Janitzky’s installations?

Victor: As a person who attended some performances by Ziegler and Janitzky previous to the KM show, but not to the last one actually at KM, I would say I see their sculptures as stage props. These performances enchanted or activated their sculptures. So, I’m quite neutral about their works in the show, but at the same time I’m neutral about all the works featured. It seems to me that the show has an agenda in representing all kinds of mediums. Photography, video … like a checklist.

The Bensplainer: Maybe old-fashioned?

Magda: It is a safe agenda. If you take Mark Fisher’s ‘Capitalist Realism,’ he states that museums and related institutions are safe spaces where we can make criticism of capitalism, while capitalism itself allows it.

Victor: Yeah, Roland Barthes already said that. On my part, I am totally opposed to the idea of ‘making art’ as a profession, in the capitalist sense. When paying your rent depends on the money from selling your art, then soon you’ll be under pressure to produce, and that in return, I think, ultimately leads to overproduction and junk.

Magda: Then we ought to know more about the artists and how they position themselves to the capitalist model. 

The Bensplainer: I think we are derailing the conversation. I mean, after 1989, there is only one religion, which is capitalism, and you hardly can escape this fact (I agree with Giorgio Agamben on this). Insisting on this leftist nostalgia is counterproductive. Art is luxury. Some artists are fighting against this mindset, but we are still in such a system.

Magda: Indeed – and yet the exhibition promotes an anti-capitalist position. For example, The Coop Fund’s aim is to provide an alternative funding, so that is very clear. Guillaume Maraud is also doing a standard institutional critique by creating an alternative fund. 

The Bensplainer: At the same time, these practices are canonized. When KM showed Andrea Fraser in 1993, the questions she raised were novel and on the point. The visuals in this present show are canonized. Stephen Willats repeats a visual language of more established artists, as Hans Haacke for instance. 

Magda: Yes, maybe the only thing Willats adds is a British perspective on the problem.

The Bensplainer: Victor, you said on the occasion of our NS-Dokumentationszentrum conversation [link]: „Preaching to the converted.“ Basically, we find here the same pattern. So, you can argue with a lot of reasoning about a motivation for an exhibition – in this case an anti-capitalist agenda – but what I expect is to see works and practices which change the way I see. Sorry if I repeat myself, but seeing works which repeat, without a difference, canonized visual experiences from the past gives me such a kind of déjà vu effect. What is this exhibition about? What are the politics that motivated it? From the point of view of the exhibition making, it is in itself a sort of repetition. In the last Documenta, the assumptions were similar: a lot of nostalgic Marxism and related leftist theoretical positions, which are good, but at the end of the day, the works become an illustration sketched aprioristically by the curators and the artistic director. Here lays the critical point which we really have to address. Paradoxically, if the works are repeating themselves, aren’t also the politics of exhibition making repeating themselves? 

Magda: Yes and no. My question is: why are you repeating these positions? You can repeat a practice under the change of circumstances: the pandemic has changed the parameters. 

The Bensplainer: I agree: the pandemic has unveiled changes which were not so clear before that. 

Magda: So, does the repetition offered in this exhibition reflect that? Does our present context require repetition? How are the works from the 1980s and 1990s relevant now?

The Bensplainer: Let’s be clear: I don’t consider repetition with a negative value. I remember a wonderful group show at KW, Berlin, in 2007, titled ‘History Will Repeat Itself.’ Precisely, it was interesting because it focused on repetition as a visual device, that’s to say how artists and works dealt with the notion of repetition, be it of other works or of overarching experiences. I remember this great video by Jeremy Deller, ‘The Battle of Orgreave’ (2001), directed by Mike Figgis, in which the artist reenacted the famous 1984 clash between workers and police in Orgreave, South Yorkshire, England, and interviewed some participants from both sides too. By the way, it was a ground breaking show, but if you now repeat because it is fashion, a canon, then repeating loses its critical charge. Moreover, works become simply an illustration of the curator’s idea. It seems to me so frustrating now, especially when Anton Vidokle already addressed the question in his seminal and controversial article ‘Art Without Artists?’ on e-flux already in 2010. [link]

Victor: Yeah, that’s what I find problematic with this show: in this time of existential precariousness, how can an artist be critical or be able to question the politics of an exhibition? You’re invited, you get attention and funds, you simply go along with it. The institutions are creating ideological precariousness by wagging with the money. Nonetheless, I see that an artist needs the money. I think it is an inherent issue of institutional exhibition making, but I can’t see an immediate way out of it. It is a trap. The people in the institutions are also paid to play their role, and if they refuse to, replacement will be found quickly.

The Bensplainer: I don’t think that it is the main point here.

Magda: I recognize that there are many artists that suffer contemporary financial precariousness, but there are equally many who do not. Let’s be honest, how many artists, or student artists, may claim that they are coming from working class families? I mean, many are playing the role, but really?

The Bensplainer: I have to check it again, but there is a statistic in Bavaria that states that families on the edge of or below existential and financial poverty who are able to send their kids to higher education are 6 or 7%. That’s a ridiculous percentage, especially because these underprivileged students or artists have then a structural difficulty in order to enter the so-called art system.

Magda: Mid- or upper-class people study art. They come from that comfortable background. At any given time, they may or may not have money, but they indeed have a safety net. 

Victor: People that I talked to were missing a critical view on the institution itself and how this show sits within its history and why they did the show there, since the Kunstverein was developed specifically to cultivate an image and space for the bourgeoisie, the middle class, by propagating aesthetic values from the upper class. It was the beginning of the ‘public sphere’ separate from the court, but also was the image of upward mobility and how its members today, generally upper middle class, use the space as a form of patronage and charity as an additive to their cultural capital. So, one might interpret this show as cynical, but I personally think that there is also the possibility of freeing yourself up from that tradition and subverting or bastardizing that project of that middle class of 200 years ago. However, I think that the show is too conventional and there is an opportunity missed here. 

The Bensplainer: Sorry if I always bring up my PhD topic about the Russian so-called Avant-Garde. If you analyze it socially, the Avant-Garde cloud was also animated by class and social warfare. Practitioners from the periphery came to the capitals, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and they had to fight with their contemporaries belonging to the urban mid- or upper-class world. For instance, you have Malevich who needs to rent a big apartment for him and his family, in order to sub-let and make a little profit from other people. But he also has to provide meals for them and he can paint only when he has some spare time. You still have today this romantic idea of the Avant-Garde, forgetting that it was also a very hard social situation.

Magda: But, the thing is that the economic or even its symbolic model, doesn’t seem to be really relevant. Class as it was in the 1970s, 1980s or even 1990s doesn’t exist anymore. What about class and technology? You can’t apply for jobs because you don’t have easy access to the Internet, because you don’t own a laptop or a smartphone. You can’t have a flat because you don’t get the notification on time. And flexibility changed the notion of work. There are a lot of structural changes in our societies, which the show’s accompanying text acknowledges clearly, but they are not examined in the work, or at least only in the orthodox leftist way. These positions are repeated nostalgically in the art. To me, the working class today is exemplified by DHL delivery workers.

The Bensplainer: I would add this. Today's working class might also be embodied by wannabe successful TikTok accounts! You may immediately perceive the fakeness in appropriating models from the supposed upper class in order to convey a different idea about yourself.

Magda: Fake it until you make it! TikTok responds to an already established model.

The Bensplainer: The novel level conveyed by TikTok is that it is not about hustling or conning anymore. Everybody knows everything is fake, so everybody accepts the coded rules.

Victor: That’s the classic definition of Žižek’s ‘ideology.’

Magda: Coming back to the show, I was surprised that urgent political issues were not questioned. I mean, the rise of populism is an issue, and it is class oriented. I don’t know much about Berlusconi and his years in power, but he did address the narrative of his politics to a certain class and set up a model for the recent years, didn’t he?

The Bensplainer: We Italians are not recognized in such a way anymore, but we’re still at the verge of the Avant-Garde! If history repeats itself as a farce, after Berlusconi everything is a farce. He had – and to some extent still has – an appeal to the working class, in the sense that he sold a narrative through which you can change your life only by willing it. At his first election run in 1994 he won in working class’ bastions, where traditionally the former Communist Party won with ease, efficiently selling his abstract ideas on liberty through his glittering television sets. So, already then, you might perceive that categories such as the Left and the Right were structurally changing. And this historical and epochal shift, so charged with ideological questions, is totally forgotten in this exhibition. 

Magda: Thus, I could have accepted as legitimate the exhibition’s assumptions, even if illustrational, if they would have addressed the ongoing complexity of the topic of populism, digitalization, 0-hours contracts, and so on, all related to an idea of the working class. Then it would have been fair enough!

The Bensplainer: I would add another topic to this. If you consider the state of satire, especially from the US, comedy is way ahead of visual art. It addresses those topics in a much more effective and creative way than visual art is actually doing. Only because they’re really reaching millions of people.

Magda: Yes, John Oliver, for instance.

The Bensplainer: I became a huge fan of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night monologues in the last two years, because he and his authors adapted his style of comedy shifting from weird Hollywood absurdities to overall US social and political issues. So, his and his authors’ craft reached a new level of satire, and the audience’s awareness. What can visual art do, as powerful as it might be, in comparison to mainstream satire? Let’s simply think about how Kimmel dealt with the topic Obamacare and how he related to – his personal history.

Magda: This is important, as access to healthcare in the US especially, is a class issue. But then, yeah, why don’t you simply invite a comedian to KM, then? Ok, you could never afford that, but who knows?

The Bensplainer: It would be so wonderful! But this idea should also be declined in a weirder approach. 

Magda: For sure, a comedian in an art space could have more freedom compared to the one he could have on national television. 

The Bensplainer: Victor, do you remember Olof Olsson’s performance at Lothringer 13’s cafe in Munich in 2017? 

Victor: Yes.

The Bensplainer I found it brilliant, mixing visual and comedy devices, and very generous, because it lasted so long! This kind of transdisciplinary performance says more about social, political and economic issues, than a conventional show, like this one at KM. If I had to make a single critical statement about this show at KM is that it doesn’t move our present cultural perception to a different plane, as satire does.

Magda: My impression is that a student went through their assigned reading list, without going to the library. Everything which was required was read, but no insight was then further researched.