Diana Taylor: ¡Presente! The Politics of Presence (2020)

“In ¡Presente! Diana Taylor asks what it means to be physically and politically present in situations where it seems that nothing can be done. As much an act, a word, an attitude, a theoretical intervention, and a performance pedagogy, Taylor maps ¡presente! at work in scenarios ranging from conquest, through colonial enactments and resistance movements, to present moments of capitalist extractivism and forced migration in the Americas. ¡Presente!—present among, with, and to; a walking and talking with others; an ontological and epistemic reflection on presence and subjectivity as participatory and relational, founded on mutual recognition—requires rethinking and unlearning in ways that challenge colonial epistemologies. Showing how knowledge is not something to be harvested but a process of being, knowing, and acting with others, Taylor models a way for scholarship to be present in political struggles.”

Publisher Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2020
Dissident Acts series
ISBN 9781478009443, 1478009446
xii+329 pages

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (31 MB, updated on 2021-4-13)

Lydgalleriet Retrospective 2005–2020 (2020)

“The Lydgalleriet Retrospective presents a series of conversations, accounts, reflections and responses to the activity of the gallery since it’s first emergence in 2005.

Appearing for the first time in English language translation, the texts and images chart the growth of Lydgalleriet from the early years up until the present day. The book presents an important survey of Nordic sound art and reflects upon wider themes within sonic culture, with contributions from multiple notable voices within the field. This book, first launched at Bergen Art Book Fair 2020, coincides with the gallery’s move to its own purpose built space in Strandgaten, Bergen.”

Edited by Sissel Lillebostad, Julie Lillelien Porter and Samuel Brzeski
Publisher Lydgalleriet, Bergen, November 2020
Open access
ISBN 9788269118421
235 pages

Publisher

Book reader
PDF, PDF (28 MB)
EPUB, EPUB (47 MB)

Cymene Howe, Anand Pandian (eds.): Anthropocene Unseen: A Lexicon (2020)

“The idea of the Anthropocene often generates an overwhelming sense of abjection or apathy. It occupies the imagination as a set of circumstances that counterpose individual human actors against ungraspable scales and impossible odds. There is much at stake in how we understand the implications of this planetary imagination, and how to plot paths from this present to other less troubling futures. With Anthropocene Unseen: A Lexicon, the editors aim at a resource helpful for this task: a catalog of ways to pluralize and radicalize our picture of the Anthropocene, to make it speak more effectively to a wider range of contemporary human societies and circumstances. Organized as a lexicon for troubled times, each entry in this book recognizes the gravity of the global forecasts that invest the present with its widespread air of crisis, urgency, and apocalyptic possibility. Each also finds value in smaller scales of analysis, capturing the magnitude of an epoch in the unique resonances afforded by a single word.

The Holocene may have been the age in which we learned our letters, but we are faced now with circumstances that demand more experimental plasticity. Alternative ways of perceiving a moment can bring a halt to habitual action, opening a space for slantwise movements through the shock of the unexpected. Each small essay in this lexicon is meant to do just this, drawing from anthropology, literary studies, artistic practice, and other humanistic endeavors to open up the range of possible action by contributing some other concrete way of seeing the present. Each entry proposes a different way of conceiving this Earth from some grounded place, always in a manner that aims to provoke a different imagination of the Anthropocene as a whole.

The Anthropocene is a world-engulfing concept, drawing every thing and being imaginable into its purview, both in terms of geographic scale and temporal duration. Pronouncing an epoch in our own name may seem the ultimate act of apex species self-aggrandizement, a picture of the world as dominated by ourselves. Can we learn new ways of being in the face of this challenge, approaching the transmogrification of the ecosphere in a spirit of experimentation rather than catastrophic risk and existential dismay? This lexicon is meant as a site to imagine and explore what human beings can do differently with this time, and with its sense of peril.”

Publisher Punctum Books, February 2020
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International License
ISBN 9781950192557
540 pages

Publisher
OAPEN
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (218 MB)
Earlier online edition (2016-2017)