Sylvère Lotringer, R.I.P. (1938-2021)

From Alex Greenberger's 11-10-21 ARTNEWS article entitled "Sylvère Lotringer, Semiotext(e) Founder Who Brought French Theory to New York Art World, Has Died at 83":

Sylvère Lotringer, a French philosopher whose influential Semiotext(e) publishing imprint is credited with spurring an interest in French theory within the New York art world of the 1970s and ’80s, has died at 83. A representative for Semiotext(e) said that Lotringer died of a long illness on Monday in Ensenada, Baja California.

“His big life encompassed many key points of the 20th and 21st centuries,” Hedi El Kholti, managing editor of Semiotext(e), wrote in a statement. “He will be sorely missed by his family, friends, ex-students, and many collaborators.”

Lotringer founded Semiotext(e) in 1974 with a group of students at Columbia University, where he taught in the philosophy department. It began as a journal that was associated with academia, although its tendency toward more avant-garde forms of publishing that included image-heavy layouts and its willingness to print cutting-edge theory later brought it into the fold of the art world. Since 2004, the entire Semiotext(e) list has been jointly co-edited by Lotringer and Chris Kraus, as well as El Kholti, who serves as managing editor.

Nearly 50 years after its founding, Semiotext(e) has obtained cult status in the art world. Through its various books series, it has published tomes by Dodie Bellamy, Hervé Guibert, Natasha Stagg, Paul B. Preciado, the Bernadette Corporation, and Kraus, who was romantically involved with Lotringer and included a version of him in her 1997 novel I Love Dick. (Since the ’90s, Kraus has also run a series of books published through Semiotext(e) known as “Native Agents.” Initially, its focus was writings by women. Its name is a reference to “Foreign Agents,” Lotringer’s book series devoted to French theory.)

Within the art world, Semiotext(e) is most closely associated with a 1975 conference called “Schizo-Culture,” as well as a 1978 issue published under the same name. In that edition, Semiotext(e) published English-language translations of texts by Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard, and Michel Foucault, all of whom were not well-known to American readers at the time because many of their texts had not yet been translated. Alongside their writings came pieces of writing by filmmaker Jack Smith, composers John Cage and Philip Glass, experimental playwright Kathy Acker, and artists Robert Wilson, John Giorno, and Pat Steir. The issue, with designs by filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow and artist Denise Green, was laid out in various fonts and with seemingly unrelated images....

To read the entire article, click HERE.