Ollivier Dyens: Metal and Flesh: The Evolution of Man. Technology Takes Over (2001)

For more than 3,000 years, humans have explored uncharted geographic and spiritual realms. Present-day explorers face new territories born from the coupling of living tissue and metal, strange lifeforms that are intelligent but unconscious, neither completely alive nor dead. Our bodies are now made of machines, images, and information. We are becoming cultural bodies in a world inhabited by cyborgs, clones, genetically modified animals, and innumerable species of human/information symbionts.

Ollivier Dyens’s Metal and Flesh is about two closely related phenomena: the technologically induced transformation of our perceptions of the world and the emergence of a cultural biology. Culture, according to Dyens, is taking control of the biosphere. Focusing on the twentieth century—which will be remembered as the century in which the living body was blurred, molded, and transformed by technology and culture—Dyens ruminates on the undeniable and irreversible human/machine entanglement that is changing the very nature of our lives.

Translated by Ollivier Dyens, Evan J. Bibbee
Publisher MIT Press, 2001
ISBN 0262042002, 9780262042000
Length 120 pages

Keywords and phrases
cyberpunk, cyborg, Robocop, Pamela Anderson, Metaman, ontology, Gregor Samsa, doublethink, Kevin Kelly, a-life, William Gibson, Cruel Miracles, Bruce Sterling, artificial intelligence, Joel Slayton, Reprogenetics, semiotic, extraterrestrial, Richard Dawkins, Bodies without Organs

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PhotoStatic, Retrofuturism, Psrf (1983-1998)

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PhotoStatic was a magazine, a periodical series of printed works that focused on xerography as the source of a particular visual language that was widely used by graphic artists in the various art and music underground scenes of the 1980s and 1990s. During this time, the publication served as a forum to collect and redistribute artworks that originated in these scenes. Eventually, its scope extended to embrace not only graphic works, but also concrete poetry, correspondence art, ephemera from works in other media, essays, fiction, reviews, and reports on various cultural scenes, including Neoism, the home taping community, the zine community, and mail art.

Founded by editor Lloyd Dunn in 1983, the magazine continued in some form until as late as 1998. It inevitably underwent several transformations; for example, in 1987, to reflect changing interests, the zine was renamed Retrofuturism, and became closely associated with the intermedia group The Tape-beatles. At the end of 1989, at the height of its circulation, the title ceased publication in observance of the Neoist Art Strike 1990-1993. (Dunn also went abroad to live for a time shortly after this.)

After re-emerging in the mid-nineties as Psrf (letters chosen to reflect both earlier titles), the project was not again able to find traction. The internet boom was well underway, and so it seemed that the cultural moment for this type of publication had simply passed on.

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Pierre Bourdieu: The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (1993)

“The Field of Cultural Production brings together Bourdieu’s most important writings on art, literature, and aesthetics. Bourdieu develops a highly original approach to the study of literary and artistic works, addressing many of the key issues that have preoccupied literary, art, and cultural criticism in the late twentieth century: aesthetic value and judgement, the social contexts of cultural practice, the role of intellectuals and artists, and the structures of literary and artistic authority. Bourdieu elaborates a theory of the cultural field which situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption. He examines the individuals and institutions involved in making cultural products what they are: the writers, artists, publishers, critics, dealers, galleries and academies. He analyses the structure of the cultural field itself as well as its position within the broader social structures of power. The essays in this volume deal with such diverse topics as Flaubert’s point of view, Manet’s aesthetic revolution, the historical creation of the pure gaze, and the relationship between art and power. The Field of Cultural Production will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines: sociology and social theory, literature, art, and cultural studies.”

Edited by Randal Johnson
Publisher Columbia University Press, 1993
ISBN 0231082878, 9780231082877
viii+322 pages

Reviews: Tom Huhn (Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1996), Sigrid R⊘yseng (International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2010).

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