Jens Eder, Charlotte Klonk (eds.): Image Operations: Visual Media and Political Conflict (2016)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, image, media activism, photography, politics, social movements, video, visual culture, war
“Still and moving images are crucial factors in contemporary political conflicts. They not only have representational, expressive or illustrative functions, but also augment and create significant events. Beyond altering states of mind, they affect bodies and often life or death is at stake. Various forms of image operations are currently performed in the contexts of war, insurgency and activism. Photographs, videos, interactive simulations and other kinds of images steer drones to their targets, train soldiers, terrorise the public, celebrate protest icons, uncover injustices, or call for help. They are often parts of complex agential networks and move across different media and cultural environments. This book is a pioneering interdisciplinary study of the role and function of images in political life. Balancing theoretical reflections with in-depth case studies, it brings together renowned scholars and activists from different fields to offer a multifaceted critical perspective on a crucial aspect of contemporary visual culture.”
Publisher Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2016
ISBN 9781526107213, 152610721X
xv+232+[24] pages
Review: Zoya Brumberg (Journal of Visual Culture, 2018).
PDF (21 MB)
Comment (0)bell hooks: Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (1995)
Filed under book | Tags: · african american culture, art criticism, art history, black people, feminism, photography, politics, visual culture
“In her first book about art and the “politics of the visual,” hooks, a writer known for her clarifying views on feminism and black women, addresses the deplorable absence of discourse on black artists, especially by black critics. Why, she asks, has art played a minimal role in the lives of most African Americans? With a firm grasp of the racial and cultural climate in which black aesthetics must grow, hooks offers some astute answers to that question and holds out hope for change. She then hones her aesthetic in her adept interpretations of the work and impact of black artists, including Romare Bearden, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alison Saar, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, and Margo Humphreys. Hooks also discusses portrayals of black women and men in art and, in an essay on photography, how the ‘struggle over images’ became part of the black liberation movement. Art matters, hooks assures us; it helps us forge our identities while forcing society to evolve from being exclusive to inclusive. As erudite and sophisticated as hooks is, she is also eminently readable, even exhilarating.” (Donna Seaman)
Publisher The New Press, New York, 1995
ISBN 1565842634, 9781565842632
xvi+224 pages
via Arch
Reviews: Okwui Enwezor (Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, 1996), Phoebe Farris (Art Journal, 1996), Publishers Weekly (1995), Kirkus Review (1995).
PDF (18 MB, updated on 2019-11-5)
Comment (0)Solvejg Nitzke, Nicolas Pethes (eds.): Imagining Earth: Concepts of Wholeness in Cultural Constructions of Our Home Planet (2017)
Filed under book | Tags: · earth, image, media, visual culture
“While concepts of Earth have a rich tradition, more recent examples show a distinct quality: Though ideas of wholeness might still be related to mythical, religious, or utopian visions of the past, ‘Earth’ itself has become available as a whole. This raises several questions: How are the notions of one Earth or our Planet imagined and distributed? What is the role of cultural imagination and practices of signification in the imagination of ‘the Earth’? Which theoretical models can be used or need to be developed to describe processes of imagining Planet Earth? This collection invites a wide range of perspectives from different fields of the Humanities to explore the means of imagining Earth.”
Contributions by Gabriele Gramelsberger, Angela Krewani, Bruce Clarke, Timothy Morton, Hania Siebenpfeiffer, Nicholas Pethes, and Solvejg Nitzke.
Publisher transcript, Bielefeld, 2017
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 License
ISBN 9783837639568, 3837639568
172 pages
PDF, PDF (updated on 2023-7-31)
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