Sven-Olov Wallenstein: Nihilism, Art, and Technology (2010)

Beginning in an analysis of three paradigmatic instances of the encounter between art and technology in modernism—the invention of photography, the step beyond art in Futurism and Constructivism, and the interpretation of technology in debates on architectural theory in the 1920s and ’30s—this book analyzes three philosophical responses to the question of nihilism—those of Walter Benjamin, Ernst Jünger, and Martin Heidegger—all of which are characterized by an avant-garde sensibility that looks to art as a way to counter the crisis of modernity.

These responses are then brought to bear on the work of the architect Mies van der Rohe, whose “silence”—understood as a withdrawal of language, sense, and aesthetic perception—is analyzed as a key problem in the interpretation of the legacy of modernism. From this, a different understanding of nihilism, art, and technology emerges. These concepts form a field of constant modulation, which implies that the foundations of critical theory must be subjected to a historical analysis that acknowledges them as ongoing processes of construction, and that also accounts for the capacity of technologies and artistic practices to intervene in the formation of philosophical concepts.


Originally presented as a compilation thesis in theoretical philosophy, the work was published as a book by Axl Books in 2011.

Doctoral Thesis
Department of Philosophy, Stockholm University, 2010
ISBN 9789174470734
92 pages

Publisher (Thesis)
Publisher (Book)

PDF (Thesis; without images)

Francesco Careri: Walkscapes: El andar como práctica estética / Walking as an Aesthetic Practice (2002) [Spanish/English]

Walkscapes deals with strolling as an architecture of landscape. Walking as an autonomous form of art, a primary act in the symbolic transformation of the territory, an aesthetic instrument of knowledge and a physical transformation of the “negotiated” space, which is converted into an urban intervention. From primitive nomadism to Dada and Surrealism, from the Lettrist to the Situationist International, and from Minimalism to Land Art, this book narrates the perception of landscape through a history of the traversed city.

With an Introduction by Gilles Tiberghien
English translation: Steve Piccolo, Paul Hammond
Publisher Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2002
Land&Scape series
ISBN 8425218411
205 pages

PDF (removed on 2017-4-1 upon request of the publisher)

Sešit pro umění, teorii a příbuzné zóny (2007–) [Czech]

“Sešit pro umění, teorii a příbuzné zóny je periodikum zaměřující se na současné vizuální umění v širším kulturním a teoretickém kontextu. Cílem Sešitu je kultivovat domácí reflexi umění tištěním odborných textů z oblasti humanitních a společenských věd, které tematizují současnou situaci umění a živé kultury u nás i v zahraničí. Sešit z principu není metodologicky vymezen; rozhodujícími měřítky jsou kvalita, podnětnost a relevance pro reflexi současného vizuálního umění.”

Edited by Václav Magid
Editorial board: Claire Bishop, Claudia Joles, Tomáš Pospiszyl, Jiří Ševčík, Martin Škabraha
ISSN 1802-8918

Publisher

Issue 1-2 (2007, single PDF, texts by Patricie C. Phillips and Peter Bürger are missing)
Issue 4-5 (2008, single PDF, 75 MB, texts by Jonathan Crary and Steven Best/Douglas Kellner are missing, added on 2014-2-10)
Issue 8 (2010, single PDF)
Issue 9 (2010, single PDF)
Issue 10 (2011, single PDF, added on 2014-2-10)
Issue 11 (2011, single PDF, added on 2014-2-10)
Selected texts in PDF