On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Semiotext(e), curators Stefan Kalmár and Tristan Bera, with the support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, will lead a research project designed to trace the independent and not-for-profit publisher’s wide-reaching influence at the intersection between literature, theory, art, society and life; working towards a museum exhibition in France and the USA. Through a selection of (art)works, these exhibitions will reflect, articulate and translate the paradigm shifts described, accompanied and generated by Semiotext(e) in contemporary art, cultural and theoretical productions from 1974 til the present day.

Semiotext(e) was founded by the late French cultural theorist Sylvere Lotringer in New York City and is today co-edited by the authors Hedi El Kholti and Chris Kraus and is operating out of Los Angeles. Semiotext(e) uniquely publishes works on (poly)sexuality, anti-bourgeois queer theory, madness, activism, literature and philosophy, famously mixing high and low forms of cultural expressions into nuanced and polemical visions of the present. Semiotext(e) is largely credited with having introduced “French Theory” to the US. Stefan Kalmár and Tristan Bera’s research will focus on different plateaus of thoughts such as: text as practice; anti-psychiatry, the ecstasy of becoming; “hatred of capitalism”, countercultures as experiments for the living; bodies without borders and towards radical economies of desire.

Tristan Bera is a curator and writer whose practice includes critical and fictional writing, filmmaking and performances. Stefan Kalmár is a curator, who, in the aftermath of and in response to the global pandemic, co-founded, together with Raoul Klooker, the not-for-profit arts organization OCT0 in Marseille, France.