Please join us in New York and Amsterdam this month to launch e-flux Index #8—an issue featuring 106 contributions from 101 artists, critics, filmmakers, theorists, and architects. The issue can be ordered in print and for digital download here, and will be available for purchase at the launch events.
At e-flux on Tuesday, February 10, at 7pm, Piper Marshall will read her remembrance of Dara Birnbaum, featured in Index #8, followed by a tribute screening of Birnbaum’s selected films. RSVP here.
Readers in Amsterdam should join us for a launch event at Hartwig Proxy on Thursday, February 15, at 3pm, with Director of Hartwig Art Foundation Beatrix Ruf; e-flux Index #8 contributors Melissa Bremmer, Emile Heijnen and iLiana Fokianaki; and e-flux editors Anton Vidokle, Aaron Schuster, and George MacBeth. RSVP here.
e-flux Index #8 takes as its starting point a question: How do we navigate a moment when every gesture seems to demand allegiance, when pointing fingers conduct us into manichean friend-or-enemy distinctions? The eighth issue of e-flux Index proposes a different mode of indication: what artist Adrian Piper calls the “indexical present,” trading simplistic classification for a direct experience of the complexity of the other. Structured into eleven thematic “indications for reading,” Index #8 gathers together texts commissioned throughout spring 2025 to index multiple temporalities and positions simultaneously.
The issue begins by reading the fine print with Don’ts, a section on the law and its discontents. Othercare rethinks the politics of care beyond motherhood and feminized labor. Chance Operations spins the roulette wheel of the aleatory, from Bogdanov’s science of tektology to the dis-organisations of anti-psychiatry. The World of Interiors investigates surfaces, ornamentation, and the dandyist fascination with appearance, while Bone Alphabets parses symbolic languages, asemic scribbles, and non-verbal communication.
The One Who Waits explores bureaucratic limbo and time-loops. The Day Is the Barricade tracks the ubiquity of everyday exploitation and the dreams of its overcoming. Sentimental Educations gives an account of artistic friendships, mentorship and the fraught Bildungsroman of institutional passage. Marking Territory surveys hostile environments from wildfires to colonial necropolitics. [gesticulating] examines haptic interfaces and the tactility of ambivalent gestures. Sedimentology brings Index #8 to a close with a section on processes of accretion, weathering, and counter-memorial practices of resisting forgetting and erasure.
e-flux Index #8 features contributions from Yeliz Abdurahman, Hallie Ayres, Oliver Basciano, Ericka Beckman, Xenia Benivolski, Jasper Bernes, Pietro Bianchi, Dara Birnbaum, Mary Walling Blackburn, Sezgin Boynik, Rizvana Bradley, Melissa Bremmer, Isabelle Bucklow, Michaela Büsse, Arne Vande Capelle, Gaby Cepeda, Jean Cocteau, Kim Córdova, Max Crosbie-Jones, Tom Denman, Shayari de Silva, Lionel Devlieger, Brian Droitcour, Megan Eardley, Ben Eastham, Maria Fedorchenko, iLiana Fokianaki, Eloise Fornieles, Kenny Fries, Nicholas Gamso, Michaël Ghyoot, Liam Gillick, Leo Goldsmith, Ana María Gómez López, Emerson Goo, Rob Goyanes, Vaiva Grainytė, David Grubbs, Chong Gu, Folkert Haanstra, Emiel Heijnen, Samuel Hellmann, Sarah Hennies, Daisy Hildyard, Deborah-Joyce Holman, Yuk Hui, Dylan Huw, Kateryna Iakovlenko, Evald Ilyenkov, Isabel Jacobs, Hiwa K., Bilal Khbeiz, Olexii Kuchanskyi, Michael Kurtz, Patrick Langley, Natasha Marie Llorens, Thandi Loewenson, Anton Lukoszevieze, Sven Lütticken, George MacBeth, Lara Fresko Madra, Sarah Maldoror, Isadora Neves Marques, Piper Marshall, Chris McCormack, Laura McLean-Ferris, Adeena Mey, John Douglas Millar, Novuyo Moyo, Charles Tonderai Mudede, Chris Murtha, Daniel Muzyczuk, Jonathan T. D. Neil, Ou Ning, Rodrigo Nunes, Lauren O’Neill-Butler, Nagisa Ōshima, Andreas Petrossiants, Adam Przywara, Jared Quinton, Filipa Ramos, Satyajit Ray, Bethany Rigby, Nicholas Risteen, Marianna Ritchey, Dominique Routhier, Rory Rowan, Clair Ryu, Juan José Santos, Fred Scharmen, Sigourney Schultz, Keely Shinners, Sadia Shirazi, Fanny Singer, Sandra Skurvida, Tabitha Steinberg, Karen Steukers, Greg Stuart, Xuanlin Tham, Thotti, Audrey Tseng de Melo Fischer, John Tresch, Laura Tripaldi, Louise Vanhee, Anton Vidokle, Jamieson Webster, Pramodha Weerasekera, Evan Calder Williams, Mark Williams, Trevor Wilson, Helena Wittmann, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Nate Wooley, and Jan Zalasiewicz.
The printed edition of the Index is available to purchase from select art and design bookstores, as well as museums, throughout Canada, East Asia, Europe, North America, and the United Kingdom. The publication is distributed by Antenne Books (Europe and the UK), Les presses du réel (Europe), Asterism Books (USA), Art Metropole (Canada), The Book Society (East Asia), and Buchhandlung Walther König (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). Annual subscriptions, covering four issues, are available at both institutional and individual rates here.