Gerald Raunig: Art and Revolution: Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century (2005–) [DE, SR, EN, RU]

“Gerald Raunig has written an alternative art history of the ‘long twentieth century,’ from the Paris Commune of 1871 to the turbulent counter-globalization protests in Genoa in 2001. Meticulously moving from the Situationists and Sergei Eisenstein to Viennese Actionism and the PublixTheatreCaravan, Art and Revolution takes on the history of revolutionary transgressions and optimistically charts an emergence from its tales of tragic failure and unequivocal disaster. By eloquently applying Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the “machine,” Raunig extends the poststructuralist theory of revolution through to the explosive nexus of art and activism.

As hopeful as it is incisive, Art and Revolution encourages a new generation of artists and thinkers to refuse to participate in the tired prescriptions of marketplace and authority and instead create radical new methods of engagement. Raunig develops an indispensable, contemporary conception of political change—a conception that transcends the outmoded formulations of insurrection and resistance. Too much blood and ink has been shed for the art machines and the revolutionary machines to remain separate.”

Originally published in German as Kunst und Revolution. Künstlerischer Aktivismus im langen 20. Jahrhundert by Turia+Kant, Vienna, 2005. New edition by transversal texts, Vienna, 2017.

English edition
Translated by Aileen Derieg
Publisher Semiotext(e), 2007
Active Agents series
ISBN 1584350466, 9781584350460
319 pages

Reviews and commentaries: Marco Meseriis (Mute, 2008), Rob Myers (Furtherfield, 2009), Nettime discussion (2008), Gray Kochhar-Lindgren (Culture Machine), Beatrice von Bismarck (Texte zur Kunst, DE). Reuben Fowkes (Art Monthly), Karl Reitter (Grundrisse, DE), Ivan Pravdić (Filozofija i društvo).

Author, more
Editor (SR)
Publisher (EN)

Kunst und Revolution. Künstlerischer Aktivismus im langen 20. Jahrhundert (German, new ed., 2005/2017, added on 2024-1-5, EPUB)
Umetnost i revolucija. Umetnički aktivizam tokom dugog XX veka (Serbian, trans. Relja Dražić, ed. kuda.org, 2006, updated on 2015-8-30)
Art and Revolution: Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century (English, trans. Aileen Derieg, 2007, updated on 2017-6-26)
Iskusstvo i revoluciia: khudozhestvennyi aktivizm v dolgom dvadcatom veke (Russian, trans. Eugenia Shraga and Alexander Skidan, 2012, DJVU, 28 MB, updated on 2017-6-26)