Material Marion von Osten 1: MoneyNations

Please join us at e-flux on Friday, May 3 at 7pm for a screening and presentation of archival material by editor Jonas von Lenthe in celebration of the launch of (Wirklichkeit Books, 2024), followed by a discussion between Jonas von Lenthe and e-flux journal editor Brian Kuan Wood.

MoneyNations was an exhibition, a webzine, a radio, a conference, a video archive, a printed publication, an infrastructure, a counterpublic, an ongoing discussion, a transnational network of friends. Initiated by Marion von Osten (1963-2020) as curator at the Shedhalle Zurich, the project evolved from an urgency to act against the hegemonic forces of “the West” within the radically changing condition of post-Cold War Europe. MoneyNations addressed—and intervened in—the interrelatedness between racist border policies and media representations, exploitative economic relations, and identity-forming processes. The applied methods of critique and organizing, transversing between art, theory, and activism, are made accessible in this volume through images, correspondences, and other ephemera, revealing their political potential for the present.

The publication is edited by Lucie Kolb, Jonas von Lenthe, and Max Stocklosa. It includes a conversation between Sezgin Boynik (Rab-Rab Press), Ferdiansyah Thajib (KUNCI Study Forum & Collective), Eleanor Ivory Weber and Camilla Wills (Divided Publishing), and the editors.

MoneyNations is the first title from Material Marion von Osten, a series that periodically publishes selected archival documents from Marion von Osten‘s projects and contextualizes them with new contributions.

The artist, curator, researcher, and educator Marion von Osten (1963–2020) was based in Berlin since the early 1990s. Her transversal and always collaborative approach manifested across various media, including exhibitions, conferences, and installations, as well as films, discussions, texts, teachings, and self-published journals. Her projects were all intertwined and driven by her specific way of working rooted in artistic research and feminist organizing, with a transnational focus and a commitment to the project of decolonization. Among her works are the international exhibition series bauhaus imaginista (2017–2019), Viet Nam Discourse (2016–2018) at Tensta Konsthall, Project Migration (2002–2006) in Cologne, and Sex & Space (1996) at Shedhalle Zurich. As collective infrastructures, her collaborations included Labor k3000, kleines postfordistisches Drama (Minor Post-Fordist Drama, kpD), and the Center for Postcolonial Knowledge and Culture (CPKC).

Jonas von Lenthe works as archivist, publisher, and curator. He is the founder of the Berlin-based publishing house Wirklichkeit Books, where he edited various publications, including English in Berlin – Exclusions in a Cosmopolitan Society (2022) by Moshtari Hilal and Sinthujan Varatharajah, as associate editor with Bergen Assembly 2022, Side Magazine (2021/22), as well as Rejected. Designs for the European Flag (2020). He currently holds the position of the head archivist at Kunstverein München together with Johanna Klingler. Von Lenthe met Marion von Osten while working as research assistant for the international exhibition project bauhaus imaginista (HKW Berlin, Sesc São Paulo, National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto, among others) under the artistic direction of Grant Watson and Marion von Osten.

Brian Kuan Wood is an editor of e-flux journal.

For more information, contact [email protected].

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