Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want
a book presentation by Jan Verwoert
February 17, 19.30hrs
Location: Piet Zwart Institute
Mauritsstraat 36, Rotterdam

The presentation will focus on central themes that Verwoert has been developing in pursuit of a language to describe art's transformative potential in conceptual, performative and emotional terms.

Edited by Vanessa Ohlraun from Piet Zwart Institute, many of the selected essays published in 'Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want' explore the emotional power games that shape social relations. In his writings, Verwoert looks for an alternative ethos of action and feeling, asking: “How can a modernist approach to artistic form as a means of social critique be expanded to fully avow its subliminal affective undercurrents, and produce a pleasurably crooked form of criticality in art and writing?”

Jan Verwoert is an art critic based in Berlin. Next to being a contributing editor to Frieze magazine he also writes for contemporary art journals and magazines including Afterall and Metropolis M. His book 'Bas Jan Ader – In Search of the Miraculous' was published in 2006.

Interesting? Get yourself a copy of Verwoert's book:

Jan Verwoert
Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want
edited by Vanessa Ohlraun
co-published by Piet Zwart Institute (part of Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam University) and Sternberg Press: Berlin/New York
design by Nienke Terpsma
July 2010, English
12 x 18 cm, 312 pp., 20 b/w ill., hardcover
ISBN 978-1-934105-14-6
€18 /$22.95