Apple. an Introduction: (over and Over and Once Again)
By (Author) Aleksandra Jach
Edited by Antje Majewski
Edited by Amy Patton
Edited by Susanne Titz
Sternberg Press
Sternberg Press
2nd September 2016
United States
Paperback
264
Width 229mm, Height 305mm
A supplement to exhibitions held at Museum Abteiberg, Mnchengladbach, and Muzeum Sztuki, Ldz, this book centers around the apple as an art object and as a case study in biodiver sity under threat. Developed over the course of an ongoing, five-year correspondence between artist Antje Majewski and the Polish conceptual artist Pawel Freisler, the project explores the idea of diversity in all of its possible meanings and manifestations, tying together collaborative and associatively connected works by Majewski and Agnieszka Polska, Freisler, Piotr Zycienski, and Jimmie Durham in a museum exhibition dealing with the apple.
The remarkable range of ornaments in Freisler's collection of carved, dried apples is echoed in the diverse colors and shapes found in Majewski's paintings of different apple varieties, while her film The Freedom of Apples traces the fruit's genetic reduction to a handful of commercially profitable varieties, an undertaking that requires making sense of the complex relationships behind global food production in capitalism, genetic technology developments in the agricultural sector and in politics and legislation, but also of dissenting voices in favor of another kind of community economy and the pr eservation of diversity. Freisler and Majewski founded a new tradition of planting apple trees in the city space as a communal activity that brings together diverse groups and individuals. So far, two hundred local-variety apple trees have been planted by tree adopters in Mnchengladbach and Ldz.
Copublished with Museum Abteiberg, Mnchengladbach, and Muzeum Sztuki, Ldz
Contributors
Jimmie Durham, Anders Ettinger, Pawel Freisler / Piotr Zycienski, Katherine Gibson / Ethan Miller, Antje Majewski, Agnieszka Polska, Joanna Sokolowska, Susanne Titz, Fundacja Transformacja