Mariellen R. Sandford (ed.): Happenings and Other Acts (1995)

“The works of art and performance known as Happenings have often been considered to be the key to an understanding of the late twentieth-century avant-garde. Happenings and Other Acts discusses what ‘Happenings’ were, who made them and why, and the relationship they have to their origins in Dadaism and their antecedents in performance art. Articles, statements, interviews and essays by and about some of the most influential avant-garde artists and performers–Allan Kaprow, John Cage, Claes Oldenburg, Ann Halprin and George Maciunas–are presented here for the first time since they were originally published. The volume concludes with a commissioned essay by Gunter Berghaus on European Happenings.”

Publisher Routledge, 1995
ISBN 0415099366, 9780415099363
xxv+397 pages

Reviews: Marla Carlson (Theatre J, 1996), Ágnes Ivacs (Artpool, n.d.).

PDF (6 MB, updated on 2016-12-23)

Vilém Flusser: Writings (2002)

Ten years after his death, Vilém Flusser’s reputation as one of Europe’s most original modern philosophers continues to grow. Increasingly influential in Europe and Latin America, the Prague-born intellectual’s thought has until now remained largely unknown in the English-speaking world. His innovative writings theorize—and ultimately embrace—the epochal shift that humanity is undergoing from what he termed “linear thinking” (based on writing) toward a new form of multidimensional, visual thinking embodied by digital culture. For Flusser, these new modes and technologies of communication make possible a society (the “telematic” society) in which dialogue between people becomes the supreme value.

The first English-language anthology of Flusser’s work, this volume displays the extraordinary range and subtlety of his intellect. A number of the essays collected here introduce and elaborate his theory of communication, influenced by thinkers as diverse as Martin Buber, Edmund Husserl, and Thomas Kuhn. While taking dystopian, posthuman visions of communication technologies into account, Flusser celebrates their liberatory and humanizing aspects. For Flusser, existence was akin to being thrown into an abyss of absurd experience or “bottomlessness”; becoming human required creating meaning out of this painful event by consciously connecting with others, in part through such technologies. Other essays present Flusser’s thoughts on the future of writing, the revolutionary nature of photography, the relationship between exile and creativity, and his unconventional concept of posthistory. Taken together, these essays confirm Flusser’s importance and prescience within contemporary philosophy.

Edited by Andreas Ströhl
Translated by Erik Eisel
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2002
Electronic Meditations series, Vol 6
ISBN 0816635641, 9780816635641
229 pages

review (Sean Cubitt, Leonardo Reviews)

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-7-17)

Jacques Rancière: The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible (2000/2006)

“The Politics of Aesthetics rethinks the relationship between art and politics, reclaiming “aesthetics” from the narrow confines it is often reduced to. Jacques Rancière reveals its intrinsic link to politics by analysing what they both have in common: the delimitation of the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, the thinkable and the unthinkable, the possible and the impossible.

Presented as a set of inter-linked interviews, The Politics of Aesthetics provides the most comprehensive introduction to Rancière’s work to date, ranging across the history of art and politics from the Greek polis to the aesthetic revolution of the modern age.”

First published as Le Partage du sensible: Esthétique et politique, La Fabrique-Editions, 2000.

Translated with an introduction by Gabriel Rockhill
With an afterword by Slavoj Žižek
Published by Continuum, 2006
ISBN 0826489540, 9780826489548
116 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2012-7-14)