Kathy O’Dell: Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art, and the 1970’s (1998)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1970s, art history, body, masochism, performance art
“Having yourself shot. Putting out fires with your bare hands and feet. Biting your own body and photographing the marks. Sewing your own mouth shut. These seemingly aberrant acts were committed by performance artists during the 1970s. Why would anyone do these things? What do these kinds of masochistic performances tell us about the social and historical context in which they occurred? Fascinating and accessibly written, Contract with the Skin addresses such questions through a reconsideration of these acts in relation to psychoanalytic and legal concepts of masochism.
O’Dell argues that the growth of masochistic performance during the 1970s must be seen in the context of society’s response to the Vietnam War and contemporaneous changes in theories of contract. She contends that the dynamic that exists between audience and performer during these masochistic acts relates to tensions resulting from ruptures in the social contract. Indeed, as the war in Vietnam waned, so did masochistic performance, only to reemerge in the 1980s in relation to the “war on AIDS” and the censorious “culture wars”.
Focusing on 1970s performance artists Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Gina Pane, and collaborators Marina Abramovic/Ulay as well as those with similar sensibilities from the late 1980s onward — Bob Flanagan, David Wojnarowicz, Simon Leung, Catherine Opie, Ron Athey, Lutz Bacher, and Robby Garfinkel — O’Dell provides photographic documentation of performances and quotations from interviews with many of the artists. Throughout, O’Dell asks what we can do about the institutionalized forms of masochism for which these performances are metaphors.”
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 1998
ISBN 0816628874, 9780816628872
xiv+128 pages
PDF (updated on 2017-2-10)
Comments (3)Peter Ludlow (ed.): Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · anarchy, cryptoanarchy, cryptography, cyberspace, cypherpunk, encryption, internet, network culture, piracy, utopia
In Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias, Peter Ludlow extends the approach he used so successfully in High Noon on the Electronic Frontier, offering a collection of writings that reflects the eclectic nature of the online world, as well as its tremendous energy and creativity. This time the subject is the emergence of governance structures within online communities and the visions of political sovereignty shaping some of those communities. Ludlow virtual communities as laboratories for conducting experiments in the construction of new societies and governance structures. While many online experiments will fail, Ludlow argues that given the synergy of the online world, new and superior governance structures may emerge. Indeed, utopian visions are not out of place, provided that we understand the new utopias to be fleeting localized “islands in the Net” and not permanent institutions.
The book is organized in five sections. The first section considers the sovereignty of the Internet. The second section asks how widespread access to resources such as Pretty Good Privacy and anonymous remailers allows the possibility of “Crypto Anarchy”—essentially carving out space for activities that lie outside the purview of nation states and other traditional powers. The third section shows how the growth of e-commerce is raising questions of legal jurisdiction and taxation for which the geographic boundaries of nation-states are obsolete. The fourth section looks at specific experimental governance structures evolved by online communities. The fifth section considers utopian and anti-utopian visions for cyberspace.
Contributors: Richard Barbrook, John Perry Barlow, William E. Baugh Jr., David S. Bennahum, Hakim Bey, David Brin, Andy Cameron, Dorothy E. Denning, Mark Dery, Kevin Doyle, Duncan Frissell, Eric Hughes, Karrie Jacobs, David Johnson, Peter Ludlow, Timothy C. May, Jennifer L. Mnookin, Nathan Newman, David G. Post, Jedediah S. Purdy, Charles J. Stivale.
Published by MIT Press, 2001
ISBN 0262621517, 9780262621519
485 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-8-5)
Comment (0)Lawrence Lessig: Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (2004–) [EN, ES, IT, HU, PL, CAT, ZH, DE, RU, PT, FR, CZ, KZ, NO]
Filed under book | Tags: · copyright, creative commons, free culture, intellectual property, law
“Lawrence Lessig argues that never before in human history has the power to control creative progress been so concentrated in the hands of the powerful few, the so-called Big Media. Never before have the cultural powers- that-be been able to exert such control over what we can and can’t do with the culture around us. Our society defends free markets and free speech; why then does it permit such top-down control? To lose our long tradition of free culture, Lawrence Lessig shows us, is to lose our freedom to create, our freedom to build, and, ultimately, our freedom to imagine.”
Publisher Penguin, 2004
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 1.0 License
ISBN 1594200068, 9781594200069
345 pages
Free Culture (English, 2004)
Cultura libre (Spanish, 2004)
Cultura libera (Italian, 2005)
Szabad kultura (Hungarian, 2005)
Wolna kultura (Polish, 2005)
Cultura lliure (Catalan, 2005)
自由文化 (Chinese, 2006)
Freie Kultur (German, 2006)
Свободная Культура (Russian, 2007)
Cultura livre (Portuguese, 2007)
Culture libre (French, 2009)
Svobodná kultura (Czech, 2010)
Еркін мәдениет (Kazakh, 2012)
Fri kultur (Norwegian, 2015, other formats)