WINTERLING, Susanne M.; ZIHERL, Vivian (eds.)
The Correspondence Book. The Letters of Annemarie Schwarzenbach and Carson McCullers

The fragmented epistolary exchange reproduced in this edition forms the core of a publication to come addressing the relations of Swiss critic, activist and traveller Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942) and the American novelist Carson McCullers' (1917-1967). Reading with these letters we ask: how do we align ourselves and how do we form investments of solidarity? What is an "aesthetic solidarity"? The worldly position of an affective work is not only layered but highly complex, perhaps to an unbearable extent.

The current first publication focuses on the correspondence betweet Schwarzenbach and McCullers in the years from 1940-1942. Their exchanges follow a chance meeting in New York in 1940, and trace their powerful connection despite diverging paths (Schwarzenbach to the Congo and McCullers' return to her home state of Georgia). The dialectical tension of the authors' personal, social, political and economic conditions compounds within the context of artistic production. The letters are a magnifying glass shedding light on the complexity of two artists' identities (during the short period of their correspondence) not denying but actually emphasising the fragmentation and subjective positioning of themselves in a scattered world. [publisher's note]

Published by Kunstverein Amsterdam, 2014
Design by Marc Hollenstein
Artists' Writings / Correspondence / Feminism