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Lauren Elkin
Lauren Elkin is most recently the author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel, The Inseparables (Vintage). Her previous book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City (Chatto/FSG) was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Her essays have appeared in Granta, the London Review of Books, Harper’s, the New York Times, and Frieze, among others. Her next book, Art Monsters, will be out in July 2023 (Chatto/FSG). She lives in London.

Articles Available Online


Maria Gainza’s ‘Optic Nerve’

Book Review

May 2019

Lauren Elkin

Book Review

May 2019

In his foreword to A Thousand Plateaus, on the pleasures of philosophy, and of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy in particular, Brian Massumi writes:  ...

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Issue No. 8

Barking From the Margins: On écriture féminine

Lauren Elkin

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Issue No. 8

 I. Two moments in May May 2, 2011. The novelists Siri Hustvedt and Céline Curiol are giving a talk...

Awst & Walther are a husband and wife team who create multi-disciplinary art works which range from building a huge wall of melting ice outside the German Embassy to a performance in which the movements of two nude figures wearing ancient Grecian helmets twitch at a grey curtain   Their latest exhibition, Components, at the Hannah Barry Gallery, brings together four years of sculpture and performance work, shedding light on ongoing thematic preoccupations and material attitudes in the artists’ work This group of works reveals an acute fascination with corporeality, temporality and spatiality, and the experiences and situations that occur from different combinations of these aspects   The artists employ an array of unconventional and alternately austere and sumptuous materials – gelatine, glass, ice, gold, feathers, tar, concrete, neon, are all used in making painting, sculpture and performance to explore our attitudes towards beauty and human behaviour Theirs is a collaborative endeavour focused on creating knowledge and meaning, towards a better understanding of our world   Manon Awst (b 1983, Wales) and Benjamin Walther (b1978, Dresden), have shown at Junge Kunst (Wolfsburg), Kunstraum Aarau (Switzerland), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Nassauischer Kunstverein (Wiesbaden), Cass Sculpture Foundation (Goodwood) and the National Museum of Wales (Cardiff) Here, they answer questions put to them by journalist and critic Francesca Gavin     APPLE Explain the motif of the apple in your work We like the ambivalence surrounding the apple – it represents an act of corruption, the fall from grace, but also the beginning of civilisation and the birth of love We used it once in our piece Temptation where it was placed next to a hand grenade Both objects are golden BERLIN How does it influence the content and aesthetic of your work? Berlin is fragmented through its history There are breaks and interruptions that make it unique We feel challenged by that Aesthetically, we love its dark, stark, cold side – we can relate to this COLLABORATION Tell me about your working processes We admire each other and like spending time together From the moment we met we had this need to make things together – it felt very natural Being in the studio every day is important

Contributor

August 2014

Lauren Elkin

Contributor

August 2014

Lauren Elkin is most recently the author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK...

The End of Francophonie: The Politics of French Literature

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Issue No. 2

Lauren Elkin

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Issue No. 2

I. We were a couple of minutes late for the panel we’d hoped to attend. The doors were closed and there was a surly-looking...

READ NEXT

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September 2012

Existere: Documenting Performance Art

David Gothard

Jo Melvin

John James

Rye Dag Holmboe

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September 2012

The following conversation was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in May 2012. The event took place...

Art

November 2012

Pending performance: Cally Spooner’s live production

Isabella Maidment

Art

November 2012

It’s 1957 and the press release still isn’t written[1] An actress dressed in black overalls stands on a theatrically...

fiction

January 2013

Car Wash

Patrick Langley

fiction

January 2013

He is sitting on the back seat of a car, somewhere in France. It’s a bright blue day, absurdly...

 

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