Blackflash 42.1

"June 2025

Editorial Note: Traces (Source Material)
The theme of Traces emerged as an open-ended prompt, inviting contributors to pursue connections between thoughts and follow their own observed patterns across artistic practices. The trace is a vital force in art history: Walter Benjamin conceptualized it as the tactile counterpart of the aura, while Rosalind Krauss outlined how the index signaled a postmodern shift away from traditional practices. Hal Foster layered psychological and political implications onto Krauss’s structurally oriented index, and Hito Steyerl coined the term “poor image” to describe how digital media has altered the circulation of images. All of these theories rely on the enigmatic duality of a trace, which hovers between presence and absence, marking the shifting nature of one era as it gives way to the next. The residual impact of these texts is apparent throughout this issue. There is a noteworthy emphasis on citation, which traces an idea back to a source and recontextualizes it. Traces act as evidence of repression, dispersion, unlikely affinities, secret histories, kinship, and artistic lineages."

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