Kim West: The Exhibitionary Complex: Exhibition, Apparatus and Media from Kulturhuset to the Centre Pompidou, 1963-1977 (2017)

This doctoral thesis “studies the new Information Center model of the art museum that was developed by a group of artists, curators, architects, and activists connected to Moderna Museet in Stockholm between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s. Through close readings of Moderna Museet’s unrealized Kulturhuset project, and a series of related attempts at rethinking the exhibition and the museum in relation to new information technologies, systems, and networks, it traces the origins, the critical implications, and the effects of this model, according to which the museum should function at once as a catalyst for the active forces in society, a vast experimental laboratory, and a broadcasting station.

In this study, the museum is understood as an exhibitionary apparatus, the specific characteristics of which are configured in relation to other apparatuses for display, distribution, and interaction, which together form an exhibitionary complex, caught in a process of gradual integration with the expanding network of cybernetic media. The study asks under what conditions the exhibitionary apparatus might preserve its particular modes of social and aesthetic experience, while acting as a transformative force on and through the new information environments.”

PhD dissertation in Aesthetics, School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University
Publisher Södertörn University, Stockholm, 2017
Open access
ISBN 9789187843761
359 pages

Review: Anders Kreuger (Kunstkritikk, 2017).

DiVA

PDF, PDF

Lynn Hershman Leeson (ed.): Clicking In: Hot Links to a Digital Culture (1996)

“All things digital dominate the discourse of the nineties and inspire opinion that ranges from the outrage of the neo-Luddite to the heady optimism of the digiphile. In this collection, the most provocative voices of the Digital Age grapple with the direction of digital technology and its concomitant issues, including virtual identities and their relationship to the physical self, the collision of commercial and community interests on the Net, the Net threat to intellectual property, and the merger of art, popular culture, and commerce in interactive media.” (book jacket)

Texts and interviews by Sadie Plant, Jaron Lanier, R.U. Sirius, Sherry Turkle, Lev Manovich, Rudolf Frieling, Simon Biggs, Siegfried Zielinski, a.o.

Publisher Bay Press, Seattle, 1996
ISBN 0941920429, 9780941920421
x+371 pages

Review: Steve Jones (Signs, 1999).

WorldCat

PDF (81 MB)

Gretchen Bender, Timothy Druckrey (eds.): Culture on the Brink: Ideologies of Technology (1994)

A wide-ranging collection of essays by Margaret Morse, Billy Klüver, Laurie Anderson, Simon Penny, Avital Ronnell, and others.

Publisher Bay Press, Seattle, 1994
Dia Center for the Arts: Discussions in Contemporary Culture series, 9
ISBN 0941920283, 9780941920285
361 pages

Review: Roger Silverstone (Screen, 1997).

WorldCat

PDF (106 MB)