Matthew Fuller, Eyal Weizman: Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth (2021)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, architecture, art, commons, corruption, environment, forensics, human rights, investigation, politics, technology, truth
“A new field of counterinvestigation in journalism, human rights, art and law
Today, artists are engaged in investigation. They probe corruption, human rights violations, environmental crimes and technological domination. At the same time, areas not usually thought of as artistic make powerful use of aesthetics. Journalists and legal professionals pore over opensource videos and satellite imagery to undertake visual investigations. This combination of diverse fields is what the authors call “investigative aesthetics”: the mobilisation of sensibilities associated with art, architecture and other such practices in order to speak truth to power.
Investigative Aesthetics draws on theories of knowledge, ecology and technology; evaluates the methods of citizen counter-forensics, micro-history and art; and examines radical practices such as those of WikiLeaks, Bellingcat, and Forensic Architecture. These new practices take place in the studio and the laboratory, the courtroom and the gallery, online and in the streets, as they strive towards the construction of a new common sense.
Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman have here provided an inspiring introduction to a new field that will change how we understand and confront power today.
To Nour Abuzaid for your brilliance, perseverance, and unshaken belief in the liberation of Palestine.”
Publisher Verso Books, London, August 2021
ISBN 9781788739085, 1788739086
259 pages
Review: Chris Hayes (Tribune, 2021).
EPUB (updated on 2022-11-21)
Comment (0)e-flux journal, 117: trans | fem | aesthetics (2021)
Filed under journal | Tags: · aesthetics, art, black people, body, colonialism, gender, queer, transgender, women
“Those who make it possible to really live as a trans woman are rarely those who are our representatives to the other, and still less those who appoint themselves among us as the police of our supposed collective identity. Those who make it possible are artists. Not fine artists necessarily, nor writers of “fine writing.” They might work in minor, vernacular forms. They might just be artists of trans life itself. They might be undetectable outside of our little covens of care. They make up stories or images or gestures that elude the limits of what they, and we, were handed. Making it up as they go.”
Contributors: Isabel Sandoval, Jules Gill-Peterson, Rosza Daniel Lang/Levitsky, Bishakh Som, Sultana Isham, Tamarra and Riksa Afiaty, Kira Xonorika, Maxi Wallenhorst, Eva Hayward, McKenzie Wark, Emily Alison Zhou, Comrade Josephine (embodied by Luce deLire).
Edited by McKenzie Wark
Publisher e-flux, New York, April 2021
ISSN 2164-1625
Leigh Claire La Berge: Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art (2019)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, animal, art, capital, capitalism, children, commodity, debt, economics, labour, money, neoliberalism, socially engaged art, value, work
“The last twenty years have seen a rise in the production, circulation, and criticism of new forms of socially engaged art aimed at achieving social justice and economic equality. In Wages Against Artwork Leigh Claire La Berge shows how socially engaged art responds to and critiques what she calls decommodified labor—the slow diminishment of wages alongside an increase in the demands of work. Outlining the ways in which socially engaged artists relate to work, labor, and wages, La Berge examines how artists and organizers create institutions to address their own and others’ financial precarity; why the increasing role of animals and children in contemporary art points to the turn away from paid labor; and how the expansion of MFA programs and student debt helps create the conditions for decommodified labor. In showing how socially engaged art operates within and against the need to be paid for work, La Berge offers a new theorization of the relationship between art and contemporary capitalism.”
Publisher Duke University Press, Durham, NC, August 2019
ISBN 1478004231, 9781478004233
xiii+261 pages
Reviews: Noni Brynjolson (Field J), Lee Painter-Kim (Women’s Studies), Amber Taylor (E3W).
Interviews with author: Andreas Petrossiants (e-flux, 2018, podcast), Wen Zhuang (LA Review of Books, 2020), Andreas Petrossiants (Brooklyn Rail, 2020), Pierre d’Alancaisez (New Books Network, 2021, podcast).
PDF (11 MB)
Internet Archive (multiple formats)