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Over the last three decades, a new generation of conceptual artists has come to the fore in the Arab Middle East. As wars, peace treaties, sanctions, and large-scale economic developments have reshaped the region, this cohort of cultural producers has also found themselves at the center of intergenerational debates on the role of art in society. Central to these cultural debates is a steady stream of support from North American and European funding organizations—resources that only increased with the start of the Arab uprisings in the early 2010s. The Politics of Art offers an unprecedented look into the entanglement of art and international politics in Beirut, Ramallah, and Amman to under...
A social history of AI that finally reveals its roots in the spatial computation of industrial factories and the surveillance of collective behaviour. What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest "to solve intelligence," a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind or in the deep physiology of the brain, such as in its complex neural networks. The Eye of the Master argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations, as it is found in Babbage's "calculating engines" of the industrial age as well as in the recent algorithms for image recognition and surve...
What does freedom mean without, and despite, the state? Ida Danewid argues that state power is central to racial capitalism's violent regimes of extraction and accumulation. Tracing the global histories of four technologies of state violence: policing, bordering, wastelanding, and reproductive control, she excavates an antipolitical archive of anarchism that stretches from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the borderlands of Europe, the poisoned landscape of Ogoniland, and the queer lifeworlds of Delhi. Thinking with a rich set of scholars, organisers, and otherworldy dreamers, Danewid theorises these modes of refusal as a utopian worldmaking project which seeks not just better ways of being governed, but an end to governance in its entirety. In a time where the state remains hegemonic across the Left–Right political spectrum, Resisting Racial Capitalism calls on us to dream bolder and better in order to (un)build the world anew.
Analyzing the confluence between coloniality and activist art, Art Activism for an Anticolonial Future argues that there is much to gain from approaching contemporary politically committed art practices from the angle of anticolonial, postcolonial, and decolonial struggles. These struggles inspired a vast yet underexplored set of ideas about art and cultural practices and did so decades before the acceptance of radical artistic practices by mainstream art institutions. Carlos Garrido Castellano argues that art activism has been confined to a limited spatial and temporal framework—that of Western culture and the modernist avant-garde. Assumptions about the individual creator and the belated...
The definitive reference text on curation both inside and outside the museum A Companion to Curation is the first collection of its kind, assembling the knowledge and experience of prominent curators, artists, art historians, scholars, and theorists in one comprehensive volume. Part of the Blackwell Companion series, this much-needed book provides up-to-date information and valuable insights on the field of curatorial studies and curation in the visual arts. Accessible and engaging chapters cover diverse, contemporary methods of curation, its origin and history, current and emerging approaches within the profession, and more. This timely publication fills a significant gap in literature on t...
A “dissident of the gender-sex binary system” reflects on gender transitioning and political and cultural transitions in technoscientific capitalism. Uranus, the frozen giant, is the coldest planet in the solar system as well as a deity in Greek mythology. It is also the inspiration for uranism, a concept coined by the writer Karl Heinrich Ulrich in 1864 to define the “third sex” and the rights of those who “love differently.” Following Ulrich, Paul B. Preciado dreams of an apartment on Uranus where he might live beyond existing power, gender and racial strictures invented by modernity. “My trans condition is a new form of uranism,” he writes. “I am not a man. I am not a wo...
Artists and writers go beyond disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to address the fight for environmental justice, uniting the Asia-Pacific vantage point with international discourse. Modeling the curatorial as a method for uniting cultural production and science, Climates. Habitats. Environments. weaves together image and text to address the global climate crisis. Through exhibitions, artworks, and essays, artists and writers transcend disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to bring their knowledge and experience to bear on the fight for environmental justice. In doing so, they draw on the rich cultural heritage of the Asia-Pacific, in conversation with international discourse...
Global awareness of climate change is increasing, and the scientific evidence is incontrovertible: an environmental crisis is upon us. Art and Climate Change presents an overview of ecologically conscious contemporary art that addresses the climate emergency, as artists across the world call for an active, collective engagement with the planet, and illuminate some of the structures that threaten humanitys survival. Across five chapters, curators Maja and Reuben Fowkes examine artworks that respond to the Anthropocene and its detrimental impact on our world, from scenes of nature decimated by ongoing extinction events and landscapes turned to waste by extraction, to art from marginalized communities most affected by the injustice of climate change. What guides the artists gathered together here is an ardent concern for the living, breathing subject of the Earth and all fellow terrestrials caught up in this fast-moving climate drama.
War-torn Ecologies, An-Archic Fragments: Reflections from the Middle East identifies a conceptual intersection between war, affect, and ecology from the Middle East. It creates a counter archive of texts by ethnographers and artists, and enables divergent worlds to share a conversation through the crevices of mass violence across species. Delving into vital encounters with mulberry trees, wild medicinal plants, jinns, and goats, as well as bleaker experiences with toxic war materials like landmines, this volume expands an ecological sensorium that works through displacement, memory, endurance, and praxis.
Tania El Khoury's Live Art is the first book to examine the work of Tania El Khoury, a "live" artist deeply engaged in the politics and histories of the South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region. Since the 2011 Syrian uprisings, El Khoury has conceived and created works about lived experiences at and across international borders in collaboration with migrants, refugees, and displaced persons as well as other artists, performers, and revolutionaries. All of El Khoury's works cross borders: between forms of artistic practice, between artists and audiences, and between art and activism. Facilitating critical dialogue about the politics of SWANA and the impact of globalization, her performances and installations also test the boundaries of aesthetic, political, and everyday norms. This interdisciplinary and multimedia reader features essays by artists, curators, and scholars who explore the dynamic possibilities and complexities of El Khoury's art. From social workers to archeologists to archivists, contributing authors engage with the radical epistemological and political revolutions that El Khoury and her collaborators invite us all to join.