Documenta 12... at your newstand now!

Last week I attended the launch at Vienna's Secession of Documenta 12's first magazine, Modernity?, not to be confused with Modern Maturity in case your news agent just looks at you clueless. If he doesn't already have it right up there next to Architectural Digest, you may need to explain to him that as the platform for this year's D12, artistic director Roger M. Buergel (pictured centre) and his partner Ruth Noack are using the medium of the magazine to prefigure three questions -- or leitmotifs as they describe them -- that the exhibition itself will address this summer in Kassel:

Is modernity our antiquity?
(Ist die Moderne unsere Antike?)
What is bare life?
(Was ist das bloße Leben?)
What is to be done?
(Was tun?)

If he's still not impressed, you might add that ninety-one editors from around the world were asked to respond to these questions, with this handsome tome published by TASCHEN the result. The latter two questions will be explored in the next two issues, Life! and Education, which he should be ordering for display in April and May, respectively.

MuseumZeitraum Leipzig will also be weighing into the debate in the coming months, so do stayed tuned for that cherished, if a little out-of-kilter perspective you've all come to know and love.