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Mark Leckey, »Taken-Out of the Place-You-Stand«, 2024
Edition of 35 + 5 AP
€ 900
Josh Smith, »Welcome to America«, 2024
Edition of 30 + 5 AP
€1000
An image for the showcase module titled, "Spike #81/82 – The Post-Cool"
Spike #81/82 – The Post-Cool

Twenty years into Spike, what does it mean to do culture Post-Cool? Launching the same year as The Facebook (now an AI auto-spam singularity), Berghain (subject to boycott), and the first EP by Kanye West (need we say more?), how do we retrain the spotlight on art that deals productively with the world?

With Rita Vitorelli, Dean Kissick, Rose Wylie, Amalia Ulman, Martin Herbert, Milo Rau, Alex Mackin Dolan, Benjamin Hirte, Jeppe Ugelvig, Calla Henkel, Martti Kalliala, Adina Glickstein, Travis Diehl, Bibiza, Whitney Mallett, Steven Phillips-Horst, Tea Haċić-Vlahović, and more. PLUS! Best-of-Spike reprints by Chris Kraus, Bruce Hainley, Ella Plevin, Sean Monahan, Gavin Brown & Daniel Baumann AND! Our new poster: “A Radically Condensed History of Life Under the Sign of Spike: 2004–24”.

Going Out In Madrid 2025
By Silvia Ortiz and Inés López-Quesada

Hungry for pintxos after ARCOmadrid? The founders of gallery Travesía Cuatro star their favorite snacks and libations as art world turns to spring.

Watching Swan Lake As the Post-War Order Collapses
By A.V. Marraccini

The New York City Ballet, once the pinnacle of US cultural prestige, offers relief from the terrible push notifications – until Odette throws herself off a cliff.

Ungentrify Your Mind
By Travis Diehl

The MAGA offensive against transgender people isn’t just cruel or stupid or political read meat – it’s also psychic gentrification.

Babygirl Wears Its BDSM Like a Tote Bag
By Steven Warwick

Starring Nicole Kidman as a bored girlboss, Halina Reijn’s kink-lite fantasy begs the question: What does transgression even mean these days?

Death-Cleaning with Ann-Sofie Back
By james taylor-foster

Presenting her garment archive as a Stockholm funeral, the ex-fashion designer talked boredom, the end of pop culture, and why she’d never dress Rihanna.

Uncanny Humanity in Grand Theft Hamlet
By David Kobe

Sure, hijacking helicopters is cool – but can it also be tender? A new documentary shot entirely in GTA V reframes the hard work of being in Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy.

Lurking, Thrashing, Shapeshifting: Tanztage Berlin 2025

By Alice Heyward

Sophiensæle’s festival for emerging dancers met a recent public budget freeze with ass and drag, tentacles and devil horns – that is, in wild style.

On Mechanophilia; or Art’s Love of Cars
By Andrey Shental

From staging sleek self-drivers to junkyard scraps, recent theater, dance, and installation art have troubled a culture of treating machines like people.

Cristine Brache Is a Lucky Star
By Jon Leon

The artist’s new poetry volume, Goodnight Sweet Thing, is an elegy for starlet Dorothy Stratten and an ode to our most democratic artform.

Pattern Recognition
By Travis Diehl

Los Angeles is on fire – again. When disasters feel like AI text prompts, what can’t be predicted or replaced?

The Bus Is Leaving Without Us
By Lydia Eliza Trail

A flush, on-foot, rabbit-fur-coated tour around cOnDo LoNdOn 2025, an international gallery mixer where everyone seems like a twenty-something or a millionaire (or both).

Hacking Death
By Adina Glickstein

How does life look that means to live forever? A case study in “longevity maximalist” Bryan Johnson’s shirtless quest to measure himself unto immortality

American Politics Becomes Its Very Own Meme
By Sam Venis

With a new coin in the realm, the men who industrialized attention bow down to their merchant king.

You’re the Canceled Version of Me: Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet
By Anne Imhof

What does music sound like inside out? Three producers muse to Anne Imhof about the subconscious of noise on their new dual album HOAX.

On Regret
By Joanna Walsh

In a culture of eternal returns, how can we channel the buyer’s remorse of the January sales into something more creative?

“PECHE POP: Tracing Dagobert Peche in the 21st Century”
By Spike Editorial Team

For the first time in over a quarter of a century, the MAK, Vienna, is dedicating a major exhibition to Dagobert Peche, visionary and enfant terrible of the Wiener Werkstätte.

Is Accelerationism the Same Thing As Falling in Love?
By Alexander Iadarola

Theorist Amy Ireland and recrypted philosopher Maya B. Kronic footnote their new book on demonic possession, PC Music, and taking back the history of the future.

Old Water from New Pipes
By Travis Diehl

How do you distinguish resolve from resistance to change? Every new year, we tend to cling to our resolutions – but 2025 is high time to learn from their very doubtfulness.

Tops & Flops 2024
By Simon Denny, Daniel Baumann, Biz Sherbert, Jaime Chu, Mindy Seu, Gianni Jetzer, Jeff Poe, Cara Schacter, and Martina Tiefenthaler

In another year eclipsed by right-wing politics and apathetic art, nine Spike trustees separate global culture’s wheat from its chaff.

Bibiza, What Is Vienna?
By Bibiza

Buoyed by the release of his second record, till someone cries, the prince of Austrian rap revels in the contradictions of the city’s dirty glitterati.

On Futility
By Joanna Walsh

In an always-optimized world, can “futility wear” offer the solution to utility itself?




Post-Cool Berlin
By Calla Henkel, Gisela Gapitain, Robert Schulte, Jenny Schlenzka, and Ludwig Engel

Rent hike by rent hike, people are drifting to the city’s fringes, taking its “poor but sexy” promise with them. Five denizens reality-check Berlin’s latest in-between moment.

What Happened to New York?
By Whitney Mallett

Everything’s expensive, it’s hot year-round, and even the art market is dipping – but a sense of being in Eric Adams’s CGI hell together still endures.

I Will Follow You Into the Dark
By Steven Phillips-Horst

Time was, consoles were button-mashing escapes from class or the 9-to-5. But as games increasingly mimic our lived experiences, can our digital avatars offer a way back into the real?