Q/A Victoria Sin

How does technology change reality?
by Victoria Sin
Photo: Bernice Mulenga

“Lots of the technologies we use every day don’t fit the imaginary we conjure up when we hear the word technology in relation to the future. Science fiction is a technology, gender is a technology, language is a technology. The capacity of language to shape thought is well-explored territory in science fiction. In Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), the inhabitants of the anarcho-syndicalist society of Anarres speak Pravic, a language that doesn’t use the possessive case in order to discourage feelings of ownership…”

– This text appears in Spike #58. You can buy it in our online shop –

Victoria Sin
technology
Science Fiction
Babel-17
Language

Views
Josh Smith, Queensboro Bridge , 2023, oil and acrylic on poly cotton, 183 x 213 cm. All images © Josh Smith. Courtesy: the artist and David Zwirner

Josh Smith, Queensboro Bridge, 2023, oil and acrylic on poly cotton, 183 x 213 cm. All images © Josh Smith. Courtesy: the artist and David Zwirner

Paint the World Red

In his latest painting exhibition at David Zwirner, Paris, Josh Smith’s expressive ambivalence gives way to a lyrical defiguration of sameness, as the self holds on tight through the world’s psychoses.

People
Shimabuku, Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere , 1994. Courtesy: the artist and Air de Paris, Romainville. Photo: Photo Marc Domag

Shimabuku, Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere, 1994. Courtesy: the artist and Air de Paris, Romainville. Photo: Photo Marc Domag

Places to Travel Slowly: An Interview with Shimabuku

An artist of chance encounters muses about the intimacy of dirt, world-record mountaineering, and art that opens up the body’s every cell.

Views
Whitney Claflin, Writer’s Block , 2023, vinyl on plexiglass, stretchfoil; four panels, each 119 x 119 cm. Courtesy: the artist and DREI, Cologne

Whitney Claflin, Writer’s Block, 2023, vinyl on plexiglass and stretchfoil. Installation view, Galerie Layr, Vienna, 2023. Courtesy: the artist and Drei, Cologne

Correspondences: Curated by and viennacontemporary 2023

Ringing out the summer, the Viennese art world’s own Philip Marlowe, Max Henry, sleuthed across the hardboiled city, looking for the traces of the evasive Neutral.

Discourse
Photo: Gucci SS 2023

Photo: Gucci “Twinsburg” SS 2023

Theory of Style: On Looking Like

What is it like to “like” in the era of influencer fashion? Does desiring to emulate mean accepting one’s artificial self? In her September column, Joanna Walsh considers the difference between looking and being “like.”

Views
Dineo Seshee Bopape, I Re-member Mama, 2023. © HAM/Helsinki Biennial/Sonja Hyytiäinen

Dineo Seshee Bopape, I Re-member Mama, 2023. © HAM/Helsinki Biennial/Sonja Hyytiäinen

Archipelago of Other Knowledges

Spread over a wooded coastal island, the second Helsinki Biennial posits flora and soil as more potent agents of politics than language-based art activists.

Things we like
VALIE EXPORT, Körperkonfiguration , 1982, silver gelatin print, 119.5 × 180 cm. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023. Courtesy:the artist and Charim Galerie, Vienna

VALIE EXPORT, Körperkonfiguration, 1982, silver gelatin print, 119.5 × 180 cm. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023. Courtesy:the artist and Charim Galerie, Vienna

5 Shows On Our Radar

Spoilt for choice by Berlin Art Week and Gallery Weekend Festival? Spike tabbed through the capital’s stacked exhibition schedule for what to see with fresh eyes in the coming days.

Discourse
Britney Spears objects with an umbrella to a paparazzo’s behavior, 2006

Britney Spears to a paparazzo’s behavior with an umbrella, 2007

The Internet is Forever

In the mistake culture produced by an era of surveillance, our idea of the good isn’t defined by action, but its appearance, and the power to make truth boils down to who keeps the receipts. By Matilda Lin Berke

People
Anna-Sophie Berger,  Untitled, Alexander Berger 1979 , 2023, C-print, 162.6 x 106.6. cm. Courtesy: Anna-Sophie Berger and Emanuel Layr, Vienna. Photo: Kunstdokumentation

Anna-Sophie Berger, Untitled, Alexander Berger 1979, 2023, c-print, 162.5 x 106.5 cm. All images courtesy: the artist and Emanuel Layr, Vienna. Photos: Kunstdokumentation

Moral Fables: An Interview with Anna-Sophie Berger

Is legibility in art a violent demand? During her latest solo show at Emanuel Layr, Vienna, Anna-Sophie Berger spoke about bad faith, harmful language, and fashion’s rapport with death.

Things we like
Julia Scher, Greta , 2022, marble 40 x 76 x 30 cm. © Rolf K. Wegst. Courtesy: the artist and Drei, Cologne

Julia Scher, Greta, 2022, marble 40 x 76 x 30 cm. © Rolf K. Wegst. Courtesy: the artist and Drei, Cologne

5 Shows On Our Radar

Phones from a dog’s eyes, knock-off poetry, and archives archives archives: Spike’s editors recommend four shows and one walking tour during Munich’s marquee art event “VARIOUS OTHERS.”

Discourse
#76
Joan Didion’s pair of Celine faux-tortoiseshell sunglasses, which sold at auction in November 2022 for $27,000

Joan Didion’s Celine faux-tortoiseshell sunglasses, which sold at auction in November 2022 for $27,000

Second-Hand Lifestyles

In times of it-girl inflation, everyone wants to live in a celebrity’s skin. Who better than Joan Didion to burst that bubble? Her spirit explains why style survives death and serious (prose-) stylists only buy Kim Kardashian’s shapewear.

Views
#76
Left: Pablo Picasso, The Sculptor , 1931, oil on plywood, 285 x 96 cm; right: Pablo Picasso, The Supplicant Woman , 1937, gouache on wood, 24 x 18.5 cm. Both: © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy: Musée national Picasso, Paris

Left: Pablo Picasso, The Sculptor, 1931, oil on plywood, 285 x 96 cm; right: Pablo Picasso, The Supplicant Woman, 1937, gouache on wood, 24 x 18.5 cm. Both: © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy: Musée national Picasso, Paris

Sorry Not Sorry

Warming over Hannah Gadsby’s stand-up Picasso takedown from 2018, “It’s Pablo-matic” undermines the Brooklyn Museum’s own staff and even gatekeeps the privileges of non-expertise.

"My works are the most sincere and tragic things I have done in life"

"If I tell you I have to kill you with my laser vision"