Proxy Politics: Power and Subversion in a Networked Age (2017)

“The proxy, a decoy or surrogate, is today often used to designate a computer server acting as an intermediary for requests from clients. Originating in the Latin procurator, an agent representing others in a court of law, proxies are now emblematic of a post-democratic political age, one increasingly populated by bot militias, puppet states, and communication relays. Thus, the proxy works as a dialectical figure that is woven into the fabric of networks, where action and stance seem to be masked, calculated and remote-controlled.

This publication looks at proxy-politics on both a micro and a macro level, exploring proxies as objects, as well as networks as objects. What is the relation between the molecular and the planetary? How to fathom the computational regime? Yet, whilst being a manifestation of the networked age, thinking like a proxy offers loopholes and strategies for survival within it.

The Research Center for Proxy Politics (RCPP) explores and reflects upon the nature of medial networks and their actors. Between September 2014 and August 2017, the center hosted workshops, lectures and events at the Universität der Künste, Berlin, under the auspices of Hito Steyerl’s Lens-based class.”

Contributors: Tom McCarthy, Kodwo Eshun, Goldin+Senneby, Brian Holmes, Nick Houde, Jonathan Jung, Laura Katzauer, Boaz Levin, Mikk Madisson, Doreen Mende, Sondra Perry, Oleksiy Radynski, Robert Rapoport, Hito Steyerl, thricedotted, Vera Tollmann, Miloš Trakilović.

Edited by Research Center for Proxy Politics (Vera Tollmann and Boaz Levin)
Publisher Archive Books, Berlin, October 2017
ISBN 3943620719, 9783943620719
256 pages
via catsoup

Editor
Publisher (archived)
WorldCat

PDF (11 MB)

Ursula Block, Michael Glasmeier (eds.): Broken Music: Artists’ Recordworks (1989) [DE, EN, FR]

“Broken Music is a compendium for records created by visual artists.

Works chosen for the publication revolved around four criteria: (1) record covers created as original work by visual artists; (2) record or sound-producing objects (multiples/editions/sculptures); (3) books and publications that contain a record or recorded-media object; and (4) records or recorded media that have sound by visual artists.

The book features essays by both editors as well as Theodor W. Adorno, René Block, Jean Dubuffet, Milan Knížák, László Moholy-Nagy, Christiane Seiffert, and Hans Rudolf Zeller. The centerpiece of the publication is a nearly 200-page bibliography of artists’ records.”

Published as a catalogue of an exhibition held at daad galerie Berlin, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, and Magasin Grenoble.

Publisher Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD, and gelbe Musik Berlin, Berlin, 1989
ISBN 3893570136, 9783893570133
278 pages

Interviews with editor: Alan Licht (BOMB, 2018), Max Oppel (Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 2018, DE).
Reviews: Ágnes Ivacs (Artpool, n.d.), Geeta Dayal (4Columns, 2018), Matt Krefting (The Wire, 2018), Gregory Taylor (Cycling 74, 2018).

Reprint (2019)
WorldCat

PDF (46 MB)

Annet Dekker (ed.): Lost and Living (in) Archives: Collectively Shaping New Memories (2017)

“Archives are collections of records that are preserved for historical, cultural and evidentiary purposes. As such, archives are considered as sites of a past, places that contain traces of a collective memory of a nation, a people or a group. Digital archives have changed from stable entities into flexible systems, at times referred to with the term ‘Living Archives’. In which ways has this change affected our relationship to the past? Will the erased, forgotten and neglected be redeemed, and new memories be allowed? Will the fictional versus factual mode of archiving offer the democracy that the public domain implies, or is it another way for public instruments of power to operate? Lost and Living (in) Archives shows that archives are not simply a recording, a reflection, or an image of an event, but that they shape the event itself and thus influence the past, present and future.

Contributors: Babak Afrassiabi, Dušan Barok, Tina Bastajian, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Özge Çelikaslan, Annet Dekker, Olia Lialina, Manu Luksch, Nicolas Malevé, Aymeric Mansoux, Michael Murtaugh, Josien Pieterse, Ellef Prestsæter, Robert Sakrowski, Stef Scagliola, Katrina Sluis, Femke Snelting, Igor Štromajer, Nasrin Tabatabai.”

Publisher Pia Pol, Valiz, Amsterdam, 2017
Making Public series
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 NL License
ISBN 9789492095268, 9492095262
285 pages

Reviews: Alessandro Ludovico (Neural, 2018), Natacha Yahi (Critique d’art, 2019, EN/FR).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (16 MB)