Mouth, lips, tongue, and teeth—speech, pain, and screech—eating, swallowing, spouting off, and spitting—lust and passion: the oral cavity is an extremely stimulating zone of the body, in the truest sense of the word. Science and medicine are not the only fields that have investigated it, though. From antiquity to the present day, art and cultural history have done the same. The Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg has pursued the wide-ranging path of this motif’s history in order to present the first comprehensive show about the mouth in the fall of 2020. The companion publication offers thematically dense essays that not only allow the reader to delve into the topic, but also go far beyond the exhibition itself. The mouth, its inventory and abilities, are closely examined through film history, ethnology, literary theory, and architecture.

Mouth, lips, tongue, and teeth—speech, pain, and screech—eating, swallowing, spouting off, and spitting—lust and passion: the oral cavity is an extremely stimulating zone of the body, in the truest sense of the word. Science and medicine are not the only fields that have investigated it, though. From antiquity to the present day, art and cultural history have done the same. The Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg has pursued the wide-ranging path of this motif’s history in order to present the first comprehensive show about the mouth in the fall of 2020. The companion publication offers thematically dense essays that not only allow the reader to delve into the topic, but also go far beyond the exhibition itself. The mouth, its inventory and abilities, are closely examined through film history, ethnology, literary theory, and architecture.

A characteristic of 20th- and 21st-century artistic production is that casual acquaintances and close intimates, friends, lovers, or sometimes even rivals come together to work collaboratively on the realization of a single work of art. Amitie et creativites collectives is focused on the genesis of these works and explores the conditions that contributed to the concentration and liberation of these creative energies. Beginning with the groundbreaking socio-cultural upheaval of the 19th century, the publication examines for the first time a variety of works of diverse genres and techniques from different time periods. Featuring works by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel, Francis Picabia and Rene Clair, Jean Tinguely and Yves Klein, William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, Jenny Holzer and Lady Pink; and many more, this publication. brings together more than one hundred works.

The photographs, videos, installations, sculptures, and new VR works by Louisa Clement (*1987) deal with phenomena related to a sense of disturbance in times of political and social inse- curity. Clement's investigations prove to be as seductive as they are cryptic: What is a human being in a digital age in which the body's integrity is increasingly questioned through vehement medical and technological interventions? In an almost surreal manner, Clement's detailed photographs conjure up a new image of the body that also represents the ambivalent vision of a "new human being." With the help of her photographs, taken with smartphone cameras, she examines not only the medium's ability to reproduce images, but also the reality of the technologically modifi ed human. This publication is a companion to Louisa Clem- ent's fi rst museum exhibition.