Quodlibetica originated from the desire to write about art and visual culture in ways not confined by academic conventions or journalistic hype. Part journal, part blog, Quodlibetica fosters critical conversations about visual arts in a forum that is accessible, engaging, and committed to quality writing. Based on the Latin quodlibet, which has entered the English language as (1) a statement proposed for disputation, (2) the actual discussion, and (3) the whimsical combination of familiar elements, Quodlibetica is a space to argue eloquently and whimsically about art, find out what’s happening in the Twin Cities art scene, and engage with writers, artists, and critics, who like to think. Contact us if you want to get involved.
Blame it on summer’s unexpected turbulences, but we are back with our most journalistic efforts yet. Rather than criticism, we indulged our curiosities and went in search of the mysterious motivations that prompt people to found, run, and maintain alternative art spaces. This issue is devoted to the conversations and [...]
Published 8.1.2010
From the Counter Cartographies Collective to the Body Cartography Project, the drawing and re-drawing of maps has recently experienced a renaissance. In Quodlibetica’s August issue, we are looking for contributions that engage with contemporary and historical, critical and creative cartographies. Send your ideas for the Cartographies issue by July 1st to <quodlibetica@gmail.com <mailto:quodlibetica@gmail.com>>. Draft essays [...]
Published 6.14.2010
Branden Martz, Cardigan: General Custer’s Last Stag Hound (2009).
An Arrangement of Skins
Struck by a slew of exhibits invested in the relationships among art, science and wonder, we have devoted Quodlibetica’s June constellation to that very intersection. From electricity to the spark of creativity, taxidermy to taxonomy, Greek myth to digital manipulation, this constellation speculates on [...]
Published 6.1.2010
“Are you as much fascinated as I by the science and indeed the art of artillery? Are you as much put off as I by the phrase ‘science and art,’ and more put off by the phrase ‘science and indeed art’? Who is your favorite painter?”
–Padgett Powell, The Interrogative Mood
Art and science take center [...]
Published 4.16.2010
About midway through Colum McCann’s 2009 National Book Award winning novel, Let the Great World Spin, we meet a pair of conceptual artists, Blaine and Laura. They drive the mysterious black car that extinguishes the novel’s Christ figure in a hit and run accident. Later, McCann has Andy Warhol wander through, looking for a rent [...]
Published 4.1.2010
On April 1, we launch the new issue of Quodlibetica, which will focus on Fakes and Fabulations. In conjunction with this issue, Quodlibetica will be hosting two screenings of Orson Welles’ groundbreaking 1973 documentary F for Fake at Trylon Microcinema on Sunday, April 4th.
Contributors to Constellation 7 include Tom Haakenson, who will write about Dada’s [...]
Published 3.2.2010
In this issue of Quodlibetica, we investigate the material paths that art has taken on its way to our eyes. Our magazine – in its local and international focus, in its selection of themes, and in its use of digital reproductions – participates in one of fine art’s greatest illusions: the illusion that erases the [...]
Published 2.1.2010
This Saturday, Soo Visual Arts Center is having gala event with a massive silent auction. And the word on the street is that tickets are selling out in the final days.
Featured artists include:
Amelia Biewald, Allen Brewer, Andrea Carlson, Eric Carlson, Serena Cole, Erin Currie, Jennifer Davis, Samantha French, Ben Garthus, Greg Gossel, Lindsy Halleckson, Noah [...]
Published 1.20.2010
Collier White and Christina Schmid got to join KFAI’s Marya Morstad in the studio this morning to talk about Quodlibetica, arts writing, passion, and being art critics. Tune in at 7 p.m., Thursday, January 14, 90.3 in Minneapolis and 106.7 in St. Paul–or visit www.kfai.org/artmatters.
Published 1.14.2010
Ana Lois-Borzi, Very Very Funny
Death is an ideal subject for art: marginalized, terrifying, and ultimate. In our second constellation, Quodlibetica looks at death in contemporary art and invites writers and artists to talk about death, art, and ethics: Jan Estep questions whether killing animals can ever be justifiable in the name of art, while Collier [...]
Published 11.23.2009