Diaphanes 10 Summer 2021

DIAPHANES issue 10: Punk Philology is a guest-edited issue of the magazine. Entrusted to scholar, cultural critic, and editor Donatien Grau, it results from the experimental conflagration of two notions that seem to have nothing to do with each other: “punk,” the spirit of life, of energy, of visual appearance and music, and “philology,” the art of reading texts and the past. “Punk Philology” brings together a unique range of luminaries from the world of culture, art, and scholarship to address the many ways the apparent belonging to a tradition – philology – and the breaking of that tradition – punk – can somehow connect.

Participants include famous artists Cosey Fanni Tutti and Paul McCarthy; rising stars Michael Dean, Charlie Engman, and Honor Titus; celebrated philosophers Emanuele Coccia, Simon Critchley, Esther Leslie; legendary poetess Eileen Myles; Sonic Youth lead singer Kim Gordon; Richard Hell, founder of Richard Hell and the Voidoids and Television; artist Johanna Went, lead figure of the LA punk scene of the 1970s and early 1980s; acclaimed authors Dodie Bellamy, Dennis Cooper and Yannick Haenel; tattoo-artist and founder of Afropunk James Spooner; critic David Rimanelli; fashion legend Michèle Lamy; scholar Sina Dell’Anno and poetess Ariel Spiegler; classicists Jaś Elsner and Dan-el Padilla Peralta.

The cover of Punk Philology is an art piece especially made by leading design duo M/M (Paris).

Donatien Grau is an author, art critic, and curator. He has been a long-time contributor to Purple, editor and author of many books, and currently serves as the Musée d’Orsay’s head of contemporary programs and as chair of the Association Pierre Guyotat. He has recently published a book on the life of Azzedine Alaïa (Actes Sud, 2020) and Living Museums. Conversations with Leading Museum Directors (Hatje Cantz, 2020). Two books of conversations with Sylvère Lotringer (I Was More American than the Americans) and Tom Bishop (Literature Is a Voyage of Discovery) will be published shortly.

https://www.diaphanes.com/projekt/magazin