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The Boekentoren, designed by Henry van de Velde, has housed the Ghent University library since 1942. But this unusual library is much more than just an iconic building. In this book, the historian Ruben Mantels recounts the turbulent history of the library, from the ‘liberation of the book’ to the ‘powerful thrust of Modernism’, from the French Revolution to the digital revolution and Google Books. Portraits of librarians, the reading public and the collections are all given a place, while old manuscripts, Ephemera and Gandavensia give up their secrets. Innumerable illustrations and photos bring the story of the Tower of Books to life. This work is a must-have for everyone with a place in their heart for Ghent and for literature.
- 100 insightful and fun-to-read texts by Belgium connoisseur and fan Derek Blyth about iconic Belgian traditions, places, artists, oddities, buildings, sayings, and more In his new book journalist Derek Blyth presents 100 Belgian 'icons' that have shaped what he calls 'the strangest country in the world': people, objects, places and stories that are intertwined with Belgium's history and make it the country it is today. The insightful, fun-to-read texts are divided into lists with specific themes: traditions, places, artists, oddities, sayings, architecture, etc. Each list holds famous icons like the saxophone but also some surprises like Churchill's V-sign.
Argues that the bias of mass media is largely created by its dependence on government and corporate bureaucracies as the main source of raw news material
This book presents the long-awaited and in-depth research on the practice and work of the architect, artist and 'orbanist' (global urbanist) luc Deleu (1944, Duffel, B). Deleu has been working on 'orbanism' since the 1970s. This approach to urbanism is critical, sociological and ecological and is highly relevant to such contemporary themes as environmental pollution, overpopulation, food production and individual versus community
Since the 1960s, art and architecture have experienced a series of radical and reciprocal trades. Just as artists have simulated ?architectural? means like plans and models, built structures and pavilions, or intervened in urban and public spaces, architects have employed ?artistic? strategies in art institutions, exhibitions, and more. Likewise, art galleries and museums have combined both activities, playing with the conditional differences between inside and outside the institutions. This book focuses on specific case studies of these two-way, interdisciplinary transactions. Included are texts and visual essays by Mark Dorrian, Rosemary Willink, Sarah Oppenheimer, and many others.
Valiz's Antennae series picks up new currents in the arts and commissions essays that transmit current waves of thought. The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work, a collection of new essays examining the role and significance of the artist's studio in the cultural production and criticism of the second half of the twentieth century, is its first publication. It critically assesses the changes that have occurred in the nature and function of the artist's studio from the postwar period on. A blend of art history, art criticism and art theory, written in an accessible, non-academic style, the book illuminates a number of artists' studio habits--from the 1960s through the present--including Eva Hesse, Mark Rothko, Olafur Eliasson, Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris, Daniel Buren, Martin Kippenberger, Paul McCarthy, Jason Rhoades and Jan De Cock.
Structured and typeset like an encyclopedia, Aglaia Konrad from A to K draws out and explores the plastic and aesthetic possibilities of the reference book format. It indulges in a certain fascination for lists and their cumulative force while seizing upon the fact that alphabetic organization is extremely orderly, but also, upon reflection, entirely random. The book explores this in-between space and thwarts the self-evident integration of component parts in the reference work. Aglaia Konrad from A to K features a sizeable selection of color and black-and-white photographs, which appear here for the first time. Reflected in the images, and in the list that serves as their space of representation, is the artist's longstanding engagement with architecture, urbanism, cityscapes, and the shifting dimensions and shapes of our public and private environments.
Video Art is a critical introduction and guide to artists' video in both Europe and North America. It covers the period from the early 1960s -- when video art first appeared as a distinctive medium -- into the 1990s, when digital technology merged video's distinctive practice with that of independent film-making and photography. This artistic history is also a technological and a cultural history that sets its analysis of artistic practice firmly within the context of both the development of electronic imaging technology and the changing political and social climate. Richly illustrated, Video Art is essential reading for anyone interested in art history and contemporary art practice.
For more than fifty years Virilio has offered incisive and provocative criticism on technology and its moral, political, and cultural implications. The Paul Virilio Reader collects for the first time English extracts reflecting the entire range of Virilio's diverse career. The book's introduction demonstrates that Virilio has produced an important--if controversial--"theory at the speed of light" that uncannily illuminates the impact of new information and communications technologies in a world that collapses time and distance as never before.