In our previous editorial for Issue 17.1 we described the decision to explore the theme RESIST before this issue’s theme of RETURN as an instinctual decision. On reflection, this is not true. Our intent in choosing both words as prompts was to understand how they manifest in creative work. We see them everywhere: in material, […]

It is our intent that the themes for un Magazine 17.1 and 17.2,RESIST/RETURN, ultimately be understood together asinextricable gestures of negotiation with culture and artisticpractice. We see them as directional movements — to pushagainst, to pull or be pulled towards — each with a differentcentre of gravity, often in action simultaneously. In choosing to anchor […]

The initial thinking behind a collection of annotated bibliographies came about from the question: ‘What texts are colleagues interacting with during lockdowns and their time in isolation?’ From this came the question: ‘What texts are worth taking forward into a post-lockdown future?’ There was interest in looking around the different communities and roles in the […]

The initial thinking behind a collection of annotated bibliographies came about from the question: ‘What texts are colleagues interacting with during lockdowns and their time in isolation?’ From this came the question: ‘What texts are worth taking forward into a post-lockdown future?’ There was interest in looking around the different communities and roles in the […]

This morning, as soon as we woke up, we made four consecutive pots of coffee, each shared between two cups. We made twobowls of muesli with kiwi, banana, LSA, yoghurt. After three hours of work, we each went for a run. When we returned, we sweated over the cold kitchen tiles. We peeled off our […]

Much of our work as a critical art collective turns on two senses of the word ‘surplus’: surplus populations, that is, people who are forced to the margins of or outside the wage relation and whose ambivalent status as labour-in-waiting and revolutionary potential translates into often violent disciplinary regimes of the state; and surplus value, […]

We began this issue with questions. What does it mean to sit against something? What does it mean to create against something? What are we against? How do we make art against the world? Does anti necessarily inscribe a binary logic? Does ante necessarily inscribe a chronological one? We still have all these questions, but […]

When we first talked about doing this issue together, care was thrown out as a theme early on. It stuck. It connected in multiple ways with our individual areas of research, practice, politics, and with our living. People had a lot to say. We were sending edits back and forth with writers when news of […]

Under a white London sky in October 2019, I entered the deep red interior of Alexa Karolinski and Ingo Niermann’s exhibition Army of Love at Auto Italia South East. Two wall- wide films were playing in conjoined spaces. The first, Army of Love (2016), is a kind of documentary-campaign for the larger Army of Love, […]

The previous issue of un Magazine observed the reinforcement of external borders following Nine Eleven. Here, our attention turns towards the collapsing logics of internal categories and departmental demarcations. We trace this line of enquiry within the context of The University of Melbourne and the introduction of ‘The Melbourne Model.’ We’re working with the understanding […]

A child born and raised in Western Sydney announces to his class that he wants to be a terrorist when he grows up. Pauline Hanson, dressed in a burqa purchased especially for the occasion, passes through security at Parliament House unquestioned. A man unofficially affiliated with ISIS takes hostages at a Lindt chocolate cafe, displaying […]

NeikaAn immediate issue that came up in this edition of un Magazine (although now I can’t remember if this is directly communicated in the articles or a sentiment picked up in contributor conversations) is that the doing of a collaboration is far more exciting than writing out the why. This is probably obvious — the […]

Seddon cafe, Saturday morning. Red car parked nearby. Pure, unadulterated salt. Wild harvested in a collaboration of respect. Neika Lehman : Decolonise your knowledge, decolonise your desire, decolonise your body, decolonise your fashion, decolonise your spice rack, decolonise your gut, decolonise your reading list, decolonise your seating arrangement, decolonise your watch, decolonise your pedagogy, decolonise […]

David Capra : Amelia, what do you find funny? Amelia Winata : I appreciate humour that reacts against the current politically correct climate we live in. I recently saw this old Asian woman in the spa of the council pool who was wearing yellow plastic glasses frames (no lenses) and a yellow vinyl golfing cap. […]

Within this issue of , there are murmurs of leaving, disappearing from the art world with all its frustrations and fluctuating climate of competitiveness. Alex Cuffe tells us they are not an artist anymore, well ‘at least for now’, while Anastasia Klose draws comparisons between herself and Bridgette Bardot, both of whom retreated from their […]

The Throng — a heaving multitude without leader or directive — seems a fittingly nebulous model of collectivity at a time when the structures that once fortified ‘community’ have been swept aside by the deterritorialising processes of globalisation. Under this rubric, this issue of un Magazine examines how our connections with one another are evolving […]

The co-worker is the maximum cohesion of the thing and its purpose. A collaboration between the material energies of humanity, technology and the spontaneous forces of nature. Boris Arvatov’s co-workers were electricity, radio, urban landscaping, Le Corbusier’s house as a ‘machine for living’. Our co-workers are multivalent. A co-worker is that, this, you, me. They […]

Some of these words were written while in the house of A.L Steiner, an artist whose practice is abundant with intersecting threads, beginning with her strong, wide lesbian and queer community and weaving outward into environmental activism and racial politics. At her current exhibition in Los Angeles Come & Go, one can request to view […]

I am looking for the body, my body, which exists outside its patriarchal definitions. Of course that is not possible. But who is any longer interested in the possible?’[^1] —Kathy Acker Recent judicial impositions on access to abortion and self-determination in Ireland and Ohio has seen the reduction of the subject’s agency over her own […]

JR : Rob, I want to discuss the concept of anachronism in contemporary art with you. This is the theme we are all working on for the 7.2 issue of un Magazine. You recently mentioned to me that you had been thinking about this subject, about ‘the perpetuation of antiquated styles and the way critical […]

I meant to read all about Nietzsche in preparation for this editorial, but I didn’t have the time. Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher who lost his mind in Turin, a city where I once spent a short, but very enjoyable, amount of time. Apparently, a coach driver was whipping a horse in Piazza Carignano […]

Hi Liang, Let’s make the most of this letter-as-trope-for-talking thing that we started. The irony of pitching an issue on work and unprofessionalism hasn’t been lost on us, especially considering that we ambitiously wanted more content, we wanted to know what others thought and if there was something actually to be said. This is why […]

Brad, If you recall, when Jennifer Allen wrote the article ‘Divine Disorder’, she reminded us of Kant’s distinction between the beautiful and the agreeable, between beautiful decoration and agreeable use and thus between art and design.[^1] As such, for a long time, perhaps there has been an uneasy divide between the two between what we […]

Following 5.1’s boundary-eliding focus on artist-writers, fictional art writing and art as writing, un Magazine 5.2 turns to the relationship between art and architecture as both built form and metaphor. ephemeral, provisional, temporal, relational spaces: In ‘Walking is not a medium, its an attitude’, Liang Luscombe brings together three local artists who use the simple […]