18 March – 23 April 2010

Thursday 18 March: Berlin | Friday 23 April: Brussels

Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen and Sternberg Press, Berlin, with the support of Beursschouwburg Brussels, present

Peter Friedl
Die heimliche Moderne: Ausgewählte Texte und Interviews 1981–2009
Secret Modernity: Selected Writings and Interviews 1981–2009

Book launch Berlin
Thursday, 18 March, at 20:30
Peter Friedl, editor Anselm Franke and Corinne Diserens.
Location: Pro qm, Almstadtstraße 48-50, D-10119 Berlin

Book launch Brussels
Friday, 23 April, at 20:30
Peter Friedl, Anselm Franke and special guests including Charles Esche, Marta Kuzma, Dirk Snauwaert, Hilde Van Gelder, and Leire Vergara.
Location: Beursschouwburg, A. Ortsstraat 20-28, B-1000 Brussels

In order to remain autonomous, at some point art began to copy everything that is not autonomous. There was no lack of supply and demand since power, as we know, can only be held over the production of truth or else it does not function.
- Peter Friedl, The Curse of the Iguana: On Genre and Power

Since the early 1980s, Peter Friedl has written on a variety of subjects. His latest book Secret Modernity: Selected Writings and Interviews 1981–2009, edited by Anselm Franke, compiles a representative selection of his texts, along with a series of interviews and conversations, e.g. with Roger M. Buergel, Stefan Germer, and Jean-Pierre Rehm. In his writings, similar to his artworks, Friedl quotes from and reworks multiple genres. He offers reviews and portraits of George Sand and Clarice Lispector, of Theo van Doesburg, Alighiero Boetti and Jean-Luc Godard; articles and documents contributing to theater and film history, based, for example, on Symbolist theater, the work of Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson, Lucinda Childs, Yoko Ono, or Glauber Rocha; as well as comments and reflections on his own projects.

Alongside these are essays that delve deep into the past, exploring mainly colonial history and its paradoxical traces in the present: narratives about Haiti, South Africa, Brazil, and Italy’s repressed colonial rule in Africa.

Peter Friedl (b. 1960) lives in Berlin. He has participated in documenta X (1997) and documenta 12 (2007), the 48th Venice Biennale (1999); the 3rd Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2004); the 2nd International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Seville (2006); Manifesta 7, Trento (2008); 7th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2008); 28th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo (2008) and Tirana International Contemporary Art Biennial, Tirana (2009). Recent solo exhibitions include Peter Friedl, Sala Rekalde, Bilbao (2010); Blow Job, Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen (2008); Working, Kunsthalle Basel (2008); the retrospective survey Work 1964–2006, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Miami Art Central, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille (2006–07).

Peter Friedl
Secret Modernity: Selected Writings and Interviews 1981–2009
Die heimliche Moderne: Ausgewählte Texte und Interviews 1981–2009
Edited by Anselm Franke
Sternberg Press, March 2010
Design by NODE Berlin Oslo
Hardcover, 14.5 x 21.5 cm
272 pages, ISBN 978-1-933128-96-2 (English edition)
292 pages, ISBN 978-1-934105-00-9 (German edition)

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