Spike Art Magazine is a Berlin-based quarterly magazine on contemporary art offering independent, meaningful and accessible art criticism.
Originally founded in Vienna by the artist Rita Vitorelli in 2004, Spike features essays and analysis by leading critics, curators and thinkers on artists making work relevant to and in many cases impacting on current developments or issues from the aesthetic to the technical. Situated between art theory and practice, it's a magazine not afraid of controversy and provocation.
About Issue 87: 'Salad Days', from the publisher:
Everything’s Computer Go on, admit it. There’s no longer a meaningful distinction between “real life” and life online, up to and including sitting around in the park. So why shouldn’t art reflect the furious, melancholic, psychedelic sensation that, even when we make our screens dark, we’ve all been permanently logged on? A new era deserves new aesthetics, but also fables, values, and protocols. Everything is interwoven. Everything’s computer. Featuring Brian Droitcour on lore and NFTs; Marek Poliks & Roberto Alonso Trillo on exocapitalism; the godmother of internet girlhood, Ann Hirsch; locating the tech-feminist to tech-fascist spectrum with Anan Fries; a visual essay by Ruba Al-Sweel & Al Hassan Elwan; Gideon Jacobs defends useless images; Dena Yago on the second life of memes; Günseli Yalcinkaya foretells a neo-oral age; a primer on internet cinema with Dana Dawud; Gary Zhexi Zhang’s guide to Shenzhen, “China’s Silicon Valley”; and a never-miss backpage from Tea Hačić-Vlahović: “Underground communities prevail against odds. Like rats and nuclear bombs.” Plus! Our new lifestyle section, “LIFEMAXXING”.