The publication serves as a record(ing), of sorts, of the comprehensive, eponymous project Key Operators, which took place in fall 2024 at Kunstverein München. Packed neatly in a box, the bound pages—along with nineteen unbound brochures—offer a reflection on the group exhibition, its accompanying program of events, and the featured contributions.

The book is not an aside to the exhibition, but rather a translation of its concerns, questions, and structure into the printed form(at). Much like the exhibition, it functions both as information memory and information medium. Its open composition follows the intents of its spatial predecessor and is thus a transmission of its processuality, non-linearity, and multiplicity. While the bound section centers on the visual documentation of the exhibition, the works, and the various spatial relations, the unbound brochures are each dedicated to—and in several cases conceived by—the individual contributors.

The artistic and theoretical positions in Key Operators employ weaving and coding as critical metaphors. The featured contributions act as narrative threads, traversing various contexts and intertwining diverse methods of storytelling in order to scout the peripheries of official historiography for its absences. In this sense, the loom and the computer are conceived as allies in the examination of history’s sidelines, which so often provide the conditions for its writing.

The story of Key Operators owes everything to the work and thinking of its contributors—artistic, theoretical, curatorial. All of them are (personal) key figures whose guidance and commitment made it all possible and to whom I am deeply indebted. As I operate my keys to complete this book, they seem to be the ones unlocking the world.

Contributions: Claire L. Evans, Elsi Giauque, Johanna Gonschorek, Michèle Graf & Selina Grüter, Pati Hill, Charlotte Johannesson, Lotus L. Kang, Alison Knowles, Beryl Korot, Lynn Hershman Leeson, James Tilly Matthews, Katrin Mayer, Sadie Plant, Johannes Porsch, Radical Software, Bea Schlingelhoff, Marilou Schultz, Johanna Schütz-Wolff, Iris Touliatou

Texts: Gloria Hasnay, Lucie Pia, Chris Reitz, Lea Vajda