On-Curating Issue 27

This 27th issue of OnCurating is dedicated to artistic ephemera with contributions by Daniel Baumann, Michael G. Birchall, AA Bronson, Martin Jäggi, Anne Moeglin-Delcroix, Marianne Mueller, David Senior, and Barbara Preisig, Maja Wismer, Dorothee Richter (eds) Ephemera not only serve to announce an exhibition but they are also the material evidence of a performance, or the work itself in the sense of conceptual art, their classification becomes unclear, and the categories are blurred. So it is not surprising that institutional art collections have tended to avoid exhibiting such materials until recently. Ephemeral production by artists occurred in the '60s and '70s-suddenly all formats of exhibition making, of the distribution and production of invitation cards, press releases, inserts, and other forms of artistic (self-)marketing became part of the reorganization of the art field. Ephemera, editions, and invitation cards were seen as specific interesting objects; they did not only offer a space of self-representation, they also made art available to everybody. From its revolutionary beginnings to its acceptance as a new genre, this kind of work is endangered today. Invitation cards are vanishing; they are being replaced by email, Facebook invitations, Twitter, and other fluid digital news. The interviews are contributed by Kunsthalle Zürich on the occasion of the exhibition They Printed It! Invitation cards, press releases, inserts and other forms of artistic (self-)marketing.