JESSICA BACKSELL / Provoking the Freeport Magic: Art Assemblage in Late Capitalism

Jessica Inez Backsell
Provoking the Freeport Magic: Art Assemblage in Late Capitalism,2025
Paperback, 112 pages
13×19 cm
Sternberg Press (co-published with Stockholm School of Economics)

What is magic? And what can it do? 

In this book, Jessica Backsell interrogates the magic of the art world and culture’s stubborn habit of foregrounding art as representative of an alternative value system. Through the empirical example of the freeport—luxury warehouses where valuable art is stored for preservation and taxation purposes—Backsell explores the implications of understanding the art world through contingent entanglements and practices. Examining the contested site of the freeport, Backsell addresses the dichotomous “culture v. capitalism” debate by showing how magic is not an innate and mysterious quality. Rather, it is a practice, a central yet unexplored element of curatorial toolboxes, that unfolds through what Backsell denotes as the enactment of “conspicuous withdrawal.” This insight, she argues, sheds new light and understanding on broader political issues in contemporary market society. secrets which have a rather special connection to cognitive judgment. They require us to see while we do not see or perhaps even better—to notice but not openly acknowledge. They hover as forms of semi-knowledge, never fully rescinded yet neither completely present.