Brian Holmes

Brian Holmes (1959, San Francisco) is a cultural critic who has worked with activists and artists in Europe and the Americas. He is interested primarily in the intersections of artistic and political practice. He holds a doctorate in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of California at Berkeley. Holmes was the English editor of publications for Documenta X, Kassel, Germany in 1997. He is a member of the groups Deep Time Chicago and Compass, and a former member of the graphic arts group Ne pas plier from 1999 to 2001, and the French conceptual art group Bureau d'études. He lives in Chicago.

Publications

Books

• Hieroglyphs of the Future: Art & Politics in a Networked Era, Zagreb: Arkzin/What, How and for Whom, 2003, 294 pp.

• co-editor, Continental Drift, Zagreb: What, How and for Whom/WHW, and Zagreb: AGM, 2008, 35 pp. Catalogue. (Croatian)

• Unleashing the Collective Phantoms: Essays in Reverse Imagineering, New York: Autonomedia, 2008, 187 pp. [1]. Review: Biles (Chicago Artists' News).

• Escape the Overcode: Activist Art in the Control Society, Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum, and Zagreb: WHW, 2009, 414 pp.

• Profanity and the Financial Markets. A User’s Guide to Closing the Casino, Hatje Cantz (100 Notes, 100 Thoughts: Documenta Series), 2012. (English)/(German)

• with Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann, Volatile Smile, Nürnberg: Moderne Kunst, 2014, 182 pp. [2] [3]

• Driving the Golden Spike: The Aesthetics of Anthropocene Public Space, Deep Time Chicago, 2016, 19 pp. Pamphlet.

Translator

• Félix Guattari, Suely Rolnik, Molecular Revolution in Brazil, trans. Karel Clapshow and Brain Holmes, Semiotext(e), 2008, 495 pp.

• Clement Greenberg, Between the Lines, trans. Thierry de Duve and Brian Holmes, University Of Chicago Press, 2010.

Journal issues

• editor, with Gerald Raunig, Brumaria 5: "Arte : la imaginación política radical", Madrid: Asociación Cultural Brumaria, 2005, 379 pp. TOC. Introduction. (Spanish)

Book chapters, essays

• "Réveiller les fantômes collectifs. Résistance réticulaire, personnalité flexible", trans. Brian Holmes, Autonomie artistique 1, Paris, 2002; repr., transversal, Vienna, Dec 2002. (French)
  • "Unleashing the Collective Phantoms. Flexible Personality, Networked Resistance", Mute 24, London, May 2002; repr., transversal, Vienna, Dec 2002.
  • "Die kollektiven Phantome freisetzen. Flexible Persönlichkeit, vernetzter Widerstand", trans. Marion Hamm, transversal, Vienna, Dec 2002. (German)
  • "Liberare i fantasmi collettivi. Personalità flessibile e resistenza in Rete", trans. Sandro Armezzani, transversal, Vienna, Dec 2002. (Italian)

• "Liar's Poker", Springerin 1, Vienna, 2003; repr., Subsol 2: "Art of Commodification", n.d.

• "The Revenge of the Concept: Artistic Exchanges, Networked Resistance", in Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global Movement, eds. Eddie Yuen, Daniel Burton-Rose, and George Katsiaficas, Brooklyn, NY: Softy Skull, 2004; repr. in Holmes, Unleashing the Collective Phantoms, 2008. [4] [5]
  • "Maščevanje koncepta", in Holmes, Fleksibilna osebnost. Maščevanje koncepta, trans. Alvina Žuraj, Ljubljana: Založba /*cf., 2005. (Slovenian)

• "The Flexible Personality: For a New Cultural Critique", transversal, Nov 2006.
  • "Der flexible Charakter. Für eine neue Kulturkritik", trans. Birgit Mennel, transversal, Nov 2006. (German)
  • "La personalidad flexible. Por una nueva crítica cultural", trans. Marcelo Expósito, rev. Brian Holmes and Joaquín Barriendos, transversal 1, Nov 2006. (Spanish)
  • "Fleksibilna ličnost: za novu kulturalnu kritiku", trans. Nataša Ilić, transversal, Nov 2006. (Croatian)
  • "Fleksibilna osebnost", in Holmes, Fleksibilna osebnost. Maščevanje koncepta, trans. Alvina Žuraj, Ljubljana: Založba /*cf., 2005. (Slovenian)

• "The Potential Personality: Trans-Subjectivity in the Society of Control", in 3 escenarios, Las Palmas: CAAM, 2006, PDF.
  • "Personalidade potencial: trans–subjetividade na sociedade de controle", trans. Filipe Ferreira, Cadernos de Subjetividade 8:13, São Paulo: PUC-SP, Oct 2011, pp 194-205, PDF. (Brazilian Portuguese)

• "Future Map, or, How the Cyborgs Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Surveillance", Sep 2007.

• "Further: Wisconsin and Dreamtimes West", in A Call to Farms: Continental Drift through the Radical Midwest Culture Corridor, Viroqua, WI: Heavy Duty Press, 2008, pp 35-37. [6]

• "Die Erfindung der Eventarbeit. Public Netbase in den 1990ern", in Vergessene Zukunft: radikale Netzkulturen in Europa, eds. Clemens Apprich and Felix Stalder, Bielefeld: transcript, 2012, pp 119-123. (German)

• "Cartography With Your Feet: Workshop Proposal for “Beneath the University, the Commons”", in Deep Routes: The Midwest in All Directions, eds. Rozalinda Borcila, Bonnie Fortune and Sarah Ross, Wisconsin: White Wire, 2012. [7] [8]

• "Continental Drift 2011: Argentina / China", in Deep Routes: The Midwest in All Directions, eds. Rozalinda Borcila, Bonnie Fortune and Sarah Ross, Wisconsin: White Wire, 2012. [9] [10]

• "Tactical Television. Movement Media in the Nineties", Regarding Spectatorship, 2015.

• "Future Map Reloaded, or, How the Cyborgs Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Surveillance", May 2015.

• "Captive Sun", in Petcoke: Tracing Dirty Energy, Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Photography, 2016. [11]

Interviews

• Robby Herbst, "Hinting at ways to work in current contexts; an interview with Brian Holmes", Journal of Aesthetics and Protest 4, 2005.

• Tom Vandeputte, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, "Boundaries of Knowledge: Questions for Brian Holmes", 2015.

• Tünde Mariann Varga, "Political Ecology and Anthropocene Public Space: An Interview with Brian Holmes", Mezosfera, Budapest, Jun 2016.

Links

• Continental Drift, blog, until 2015
• Time To Change / Just Transition, 2021 video presentation
• Living Rivers
• Profile on EGS (archived)
• Live Your Models: Self-orientation and urban form in the next “spirit of capitalism”, keynote at the Former West: Art and Labor after the End of Work conference, Warsaw, 2015
• ARG
• Wikipedia