Boris Arvatov: Art and Production (1926–) [Russian, English]
Filed under book | Tags: · art, capitalism, constructivism, everyday, production, productivism, proletariat, sculpture
“Boris Arvatov‘s Art and Production is a classic of the early Soviet avant-garde. Now nearing a century since its first publication, it is a crucial intervention for those seeking to understand the social dynamic of art and revolution during the period.
Derived from the internal struggles of Soviet Constructivism, as it confronted the massive problems of cultural transformation after ‘War Communism’, Arvatov’s writing is a major force in the split that occurred in the revolutionary horizons of Constructivism in the early 1920s. Critical of early Constructivism’s social-aesthetic process of art’s transformation of daily life – epitomised in studio-based painting, photography and object making – Arvatov polemicises for the devolution of artistic skills directly into the relations of production and the factory.
Whilst acknowledging the problems of a pure factory-based Productivism, Arvatov remains overwhelmingly committed to a new role and function for art outside the conventional studio and traditional gallery. Addressing issues such as artistic labour and productive labour, the artist as technician, art and multidisciplinarity and a life for art beyond ‘art’ – finding new relevance amidst the extensive social turn of contemporary participatory art – Art and Production offers a timely and compelling manifesto.”
Publisher Proletkult, Moscow, 1926
132 pages
English edition
Edited by John Roberts and Alexei Penzin
Introduction by John Roberts
Afterword by Alexei Penzin
Translated by Shushan Avagyan
Publisher Pluto Press, London, 2017
ISBN 9780745337364, 0745337368
160 pages
Reviews: Celluloid Liberation Front (Brooklyn Rail, 2017), Noel Halifax (Socialist Review, 2018).
Iskusstvo i proizvodstvo (Russian, 1926, 45 MB)
Art and Production (English, 2017, EPUB; PDF, added 2020-8-6)
Martha Rosler: Positions in the Life World (1999)
Filed under book, catalogue | Tags: · art, body, city, photography, politics, video art
“Since the late 1960s, artist Martha Rosler has produced seminal works in the fields of photography, performance, video, installation, critical writing, and theory. Committed to an art that engages a public beyond the confines of the art world, Rosler investigates how socioeconomic realities and political ideologies dominate ordinary life. Her astute critical analyses are often cloaked in deadpan wit.
This book, which accompanies the first retrospective exhibition of Rosler’s work, contains seven color photo essays by Rosler; an excerpt from the curatorial project “If You Lived Here”; essays by Alexander Alberro, Catherine de Zegher, Sylvia Eiblmayr, Jodi Hauptman, and Annette Michelson; a conversation between Rosler and Benjamin Buchloh; and a biography/bibliography along with a complete list of art works.”
Edited by Catherine de Zegher
Publisher Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, and Generali Foundation, Vienna, 1999
ISBN 026204174X, 9780262041744
294 pages
Reviews: Blake Stimson (CAA, 2000), Ben Highmore (Art History, 2001).
Exh. reviews: Christian Kravagna (Artforum, 1999), Alison Rowley (n.paradoxa, 2001).
Exhibition (Generali, Vienna, 1999)
Exhibition (MACBA, Barcelona, 1999)
Exhibition (New Museum, NYC, 2000)
Distributor
WorldCat
PDF (126 MB)
Comment (0)Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis (2015)
Filed under book | Tags: · black people, blackness, body, colonialism, consciousness, creolization, human, human ecology, indigenous peoples, knowledge, land, migration, modernity, philosophy, race, racism, representation, slavery, territory, theory, violence
“The Jamaican writer and cultural theorist Sylvia Wynter is best known for her diverse writings that pull together insights from theories in history, literature, science, and black studies, to explore race, the legacy of colonialism, and representations of humanness. Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis is a critical genealogy of Wynter’s work, highlighting her insights on how race, location, and time together inform what it means to be human. The contributors explore Wynter’s stunning reconceptualization of the human in relation to concepts of blackness, modernity, urban space, the Caribbean, science studies, migratory politics, and the interconnectedness of creative and theoretical resistances. The collection includes an extensive conversation between Sylvia Wynter and Katherine McKittrick that delineates Wynter’s engagement with writers such as Frantz Fanon, W. E. B. DuBois, and Aimé Césaire, among others; the interview also reveals the ever-extending range and power of Wynter’s intellectual project, and elucidates her attempts to rehistoricize humanness as praxis.”
Essays by Katherine McKittrick, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Walter D. Mignolo, Bench Ansfield, Nandita Sharma, Rinaldo Walcott, Carole Boyce Davies, Demetrius L. Eudell, and a conservation with Sylvia Wynter.
Edited by Katherine McKittrick
Publisher Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2015
ISBN 9780822358343, 0822358344
xiii+290 pages
Reviews: Anthony Bayani Rodriguez (Antipode, 2015), Lea Hülsen (Kult, 2016), Kaiama L. Glover (Contemporary Women’s Writing, 2016), Inge Mathijssen (philoSOPHIA, 2018), Lauren Nelson (E3W Review of Books, 2019).
Comment (0)