Editorial

Dieses Heft begann letzten Januar auf der Konferenz im Wiener Mumok zum Thema einer genaueren Bestimmung eines materialistischen Kunstgeschichtsbegriff. Als Laie, tief im Halbdunklen des Auditoriums versteckt, wurde man durch englische Landschaftsmalerei und belgische Bergarbeitermuseen geführt. Zum Schluss ging es um italienischen Feminismus, Carla Lonzi und die rivolta femminile. Auf die Frage aus dem Publikum, auf welcher ökonomischen Basis Carla Lonzi damals agierte, antwortete die Vortragende: Ich denke, sie war Hausfrau. Alle lachten.

This whole thing started in the dark. I’m not sure who it was that experienced this common expression of discomfort regarding the term housewife: laughter can often be a reaction to an uncomfortable relation with communal recognition. But we’re talking here of an actual moment—a material moment, in the sense that it happened in a room where people had made an effort to gather.

In another corner of our editorial abode the theme had come up as well, and this coincidence made us consider a whole issue on the housewife. While we were still pondering, the theme was already discarded again in another corner of the Starship building, by saying that Starship had never forced contributors into themes, albeit many asked for them beforehand.

Italian feminism from the late ’60s had tried to rephrase a materialist perception of labor seen from a woman’s perspective, as comedy, a form maybe older than any other sort of story telling. It was funny then, that this movement met with the first texts that came in: Stephan Janitzky’s paraphrase for example of Aristophanes comedy Die Vögel. And why would then someone else write about a comedy by this long dead author?

All over this issue we’re met with apparitions. But whether they be of other moments, rooms, and authors from other times, or of projections into a now that might envisage a something-else, they are mobilizations that appear here, in these pages, practically occurring, printed.

Thankfully, we’ve been able to actualize the many labors we’ve been offered, have cared for them and have laid them out for you to enjoy, or do with whatever you will.

Gerry Bibby, Nikola Dietrich, Martin Ebner, Ariane Müller, Henrik Olesen