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"Aesthetics and Anthropology" is a collection of contributions by an international and interdisciplinary team of authors from the fields of anthropology, performance studies, curatorial studies and the arts. The title refers to the paths that lead to the in-betweens and the beyonds of aura and trace in the representation of life that is performed in aesthetic reflexivity. Aesthetic reflexivity refers not only to the authors' attempts at an interdisciplinary encounter with one another, but also to their encounter with the readers, and with the recipients of an intended message in an aesthetic dialogue. Our approach is innovative in that it looks upon aesthetics as a "topos of the living". We ...
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In this landmark collection, world-renowned theorists, artists, critics, and curators explore new ways of conceiving the present and understanding art and culture in relation to it. They revisit from fresh perspectives key issues regarding modernity and postmodernity, including the relationship between art and broader social and political currents, as well as important questions about temporality and change. They also reflect on whether or not broad categories and terms such as modernity, postmodernity, globalization, and decolonization are still relevant or useful. Including twenty essays and seventy-seven images, Antinomies of Art and Culture is a wide-ranging yet incisive inquiry into how...
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Carlos Rojas presents a sweeping survey of the historical and political significance of one of the world’s most recognizable monuments. Although the splendor of the Great Wall has become virtually synonymous with its vast size, the structure’s conceptual coherence is actually grounded on the tenuous and ephemeral stories we tell about it. These stories give life to the Wall and help secure its hold on our collective imagination, while at the same time permitting it to constantly reinvent itself in accordance with the needs of each new era. Through an examination of allusions to the Wall in an eclectic array of texts—ranging from official dynastic histories, elite poetry, and popular folktales, to contemporary tourist testimonials, children’s songs, and avant-garde performance art—this study maps out a provocative new framework for understanding the structure’s function and significance. This volume approaches the Wall through the stories we tell and contends that it is precisely in this cultural history that we may find the Wall’s true meaning, together with the secret of its greatness.
Rome, Pollution and Propriety brings together scholars from a range of disciplines in order to examine the historical continuity of dirt, disease and hygiene in one environment, and to explore the development and transformation of these ideas alongside major chapters in the city's history, such as early Roman urban development, Roman pagan religion, the medieval Church, the Renaissance, the unification of Italy and the advent of Fascism. This volume sets out to identify the defining characteristics, functions and discourses of pollution in Rome in such realms as disease and medicine, death and burial, sexuality and virginity, prostitution, purity and absolution, personal hygiene and morality, criminality, bodies and cleansing, waste disposal, decay, ruins and urban renovation, as well as studying the means by which that pollution was policed and controlled.
Global Garbage examines the ways in which garbage, in its diverse forms, is being produced, managed, experienced, imagined, circulated, concealed, and aestheticized in contemporary urban environments and across different creative and cultural practices. The book explores the increasingly complex relationship between globalization and garbage in locations such as Beirut, Detroit, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Manchester, Naples, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Tehran. In particular, the book examines how, and under what conditions, contemporary imaginaries of excess, waste, and abandonment perpetuate – but also sometimes counter – the imbalances of power that are frequently associated with the global metropolitan condition. This interdisciplinary collection will appeal to the fields of anthropology, architecture, film and media studies, geography, urban studies, sociology, and cultural analysis.
Some artists believe anything can be art—even trash! Junk sculpture is a new, complex mode of art that combines the wastefulness of modern living with finding beauty in what others consider ugly. Readers learn how artists create such pieces and are asked to consider whether junk sculpture can be called art in the same way a painting or drawing is. A colorful layout full of many pictures of junk sculpture introduces readers to the many forms junk sculpture may take, such as fashion, pillars formed from plastic, and more.
"The author presents a rich variety of undesired edifices in Germany, Hungary, Austria and Bosnia-Herzegovina and investigates the different methods used of dispose of them... This analysis continues with a reflection on the afterlife of unwanted buildings, and concludes with a discussion on the life expectancy of buildings, their multi-sensory materiality and 'thing-ly' agency." -- From back cover.