How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables (2019)

“Should cities be run like businesses? Should city services and infrastructure be run by businesses?

For some urban commentators, policy-makers, politicians and corporate lobby groups, the answer is ‘yes’ to both questions. Others are critical of such views, cautious about shifting the culture of city administration from management to entrepreneurship, and transforming public assets and services run for the common good into markets run for profit.

The stories and essays in this book explore how a city might look, feel and function if the business models, practices and technologies of 38 different companies were applied to the running of cities. They ask: what would it be like to live in a city administered using the business model of Amazon (or Apple, IKEA, Pornhub, Spotify, Tinder, Uber, etc.) or a city where critical public services are delivered by these companies?

Collectively, the chapters ask us to imagine and reflect on what kind of cities we want to live in and how they should be managed and governed.”

Contributors: Manuel B. Aalbers, Tooran Alizadeh, James Ash, Sarah Barns, Gavin Brown, Ryan Burns, Matthew Claudel, Jeremy W. Crampton, Ayona Datta, Martin Dodge, Leighton Evans, Jessica Foley, Jennifer Gabrys, Mark Graham, Tony H. Grubesic, Edward Helderop, Kara C. Hoover, Andrew Iliadis, Kurt Iveson, Glenn Kaufmann, Rob Kitchin, Agnieszka Leszczynski, Sophia Maalsen, Shannon Mattern, Harvey J. Miller, Cian O’Callaghan, Nancy Odendaal, Dietmar Offenhuber, Alison Powell, Lizzie Richardson, Gillian Rose, Jathan Sadowski, Kalpana Shankar, Joe Shaw, Harrison Smith, Monica Stephens, Linnet Taylor, Jim Thatcher, Pip Thornton, Anthony Vanky, Alberto Vanolo, Alan Wiig, Katharine Willis, Matthew Zook.

Edited by Mark Graham, Rob Kitchin, Shannon Mattern, and Joe Shaw
Publisher Meatspace Press, London, Oct 2019
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA License
ISBN 9780995577671
1357 paragraphs

Review: Jeremy Williams (Int’l J Urban & Regional Research, 2020).

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Emese Kürti: Screaming Hole: Poetry, Sound and Action as Intermedia Practice in the Work of Katalin Ladik (2017)

“This book focuses on the experimental practice of Katalin Ladik, a poet, performer and actress born in the former Yugoslavia. Her career as a poet writing in Hungarian language began in the intellectual circles of the neo-avant-garde journal Új Symposion (New Symposium) in Novi Sad, but the subversiveness of her feminine practice gave her a distinctive position in the whole Yugoslav neo-avant-garde scene as early as the late 1960s. At the same time, linearity was also being replaced in Ladik’s poetic works by an extended notion of poetry, as she realised her actionism in a complex and mutual intermedial relationship between poetry, sound and visuality. Her performances attracted lively attention not only on account of an interpretation of poetry and sound that was radically new both in Yugoslavia and abroad at the time; her use of the eroticized body also seemed to lack any predecessors in the local avant-garde of the day. Katalin Ladik, who synthesized the traditions of Balkan folk music and Hungarian folklore, could work supraethnically, as it were, in this multiethnic Yugoslav context, using the references of multiple cultures, which suited with persistently international spirit of the avant-garde.”

Translated by Katalin Orbán
Publisher acb ResearchLab, Budapest, 2017
ISBN 9789631283617, 9631283615
247 pages
via Author

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WorldCat

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bell hooks: Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (1995)

“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).

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WorldCat

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