In order to remain autonomous, at some point art began to copy everything that is not autonomous. There was no lack of supply and demand since power, as we know, can only be held over the production of truth or else it does not function.
–Peter Friedl

Since the early 1980s, Friedl has written on a variety of subjects. The book Secret Modernity: Selected Writings and Interviews 1981–2009 compiles for the first time a representative selection of his (partly unpublished) texts, along with a series of interviews. As in his artworks, Friedl’s writings quote from and rework multiple genres. He offers reviews and portraits of George Sand and Clarice Lispector, of Alighiero Boetti and Jean-Luc Godard; articles and documents contributing to theater and film history, which examine the work of, among others, Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson, or Glauber Rocha; as well as comments and reflections on his own projects. Alongside these are essays delving deep into the past, exploring mainly colonial history and its paradoxical traces in the present: narratives about Haiti, South Africa, and Italy’s repressed colonial rule in Africa.