Our first issue – on hospitality – on one level explores the medium of art exhibitions as a hospitable place and questions how this form of hospitality correlates with current economic, political and social behaviour. It also considers ‘hospitality’ from different perspectives, taking the work of various artists as points of departure into other territories.

This issue features an interview with Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, who speaks in detail about her long-term project, Embassy Embassy, extending into a discussion of power, extraterritoriality and institutional boundaries. A second interview delves into the current exhibition of Jeewi Lee’s work, Inzision, at Sexauer, in which borders are made tangible in an effort to facilitate their disintegration. We also visit Emma Waltraud Howes’s exhibition at Centrum, in which the stage becomes a collaborative field for continuous renegotiation through patterns of movement and communication.

Guest contributions include a poem, hospitality, and accompanying drawing shared with us by artist Sabrina Basten, with a view toward intimate notions of the concept. Meanwhile, in Small Talk, Martin Skauen’s work takes a humorous approach to reflecting on the social relations at play in the exhibition environment – further elucidated in a text by David de Jong. Then, the mishaps and missteps of his satirical performance, staged during the opening of art berlin, are related by fictive art writer Petroschek Wulgarow in his first attempt at a ‘slating’ review.

Still to come: an interview with Heinrich Carstens, Director of Positions Art Fair, and an essay on hospitality, in which we outline the concept behind the issue: why we chose to think about notions of hospitality, and relevant intersections within the contemporary art scene in Berlin.

-Sarie Nijboer & Juli Cordray