Marisa Jahn (ed.): Pro+agonist: The Art of Opposition (2012)

“This is a book and set of playing cards that explore the productive possibilities of ‘agonism,’ or a relationship built on mutual incitement and struggle. Designed in black and blue — the colors of a good bruise — Pro+agonist brings together writings by interdisciplinary artists, scientists, CEO’s, crackpots, war strategists, psychotherapists, and philosophers who raise questions about the importance of political dissent, the function of discord in discourse, the rules of escalating conflict, the roles of parasites within systems, the ins and outs of concord and congress, and more. The book’s introduction, written as a disagreement between a cast of fictional characters, is (arguably) more stimulating than if it were written from a single, unified perspective. Readers will emerge with a greater appreciation for duking it out and taking it to the streets.

p.s. – There’s a half-inch hole running through the center of both the book and the playing cards so that you can peek through, frame the Other, and keep them with you as you read along.”

With texts by Anjum Asharia, John Seely Brown, D. Graham Burnett + Cornel West, Carl DiSalvo, Marisa Jahn, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Chantal Mouffe, Warren Sack, Steve Shada, Mark Shepard, Doris Sommer, McKenzie Wark, Coleson Whitehead

Pro+agonist was commissioned by Northern Lights.mn and Walker Art Center for the symposium Discourse and Discord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street.

Publisher Northern Lights.mn, Walker Art Center, & REV-, Spring 2012
ISBN 9780985185305
117 pages
via Inge Hoonte

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2017-7-10)

Gerald Raunig: Art and Revolution: Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century (2005–) [DE, SR, EN, RU]

“Gerald Raunig has written an alternative art history of the ‘long twentieth century,’ from the Paris Commune of 1871 to the turbulent counter-globalization protests in Genoa in 2001. Meticulously moving from the Situationists and Sergei Eisenstein to Viennese Actionism and the PublixTheatreCaravan, Art and Revolution takes on the history of revolutionary transgressions and optimistically charts an emergence from its tales of tragic failure and unequivocal disaster. By eloquently applying Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the “machine,” Raunig extends the poststructuralist theory of revolution through to the explosive nexus of art and activism.

As hopeful as it is incisive, Art and Revolution encourages a new generation of artists and thinkers to refuse to participate in the tired prescriptions of marketplace and authority and instead create radical new methods of engagement. Raunig develops an indispensable, contemporary conception of political change—a conception that transcends the outmoded formulations of insurrection and resistance. Too much blood and ink has been shed for the art machines and the revolutionary machines to remain separate.”

Originally published in German as Kunst und Revolution. Künstlerischer Aktivismus im langen 20. Jahrhundert by Turia+Kant, Vienna, 2005. New edition by transversal texts, Vienna, 2017.

English edition
Translated by Aileen Derieg
Publisher Semiotext(e), 2007
Active Agents series
ISBN 1584350466, 9781584350460
319 pages

Reviews and commentaries: Marco Meseriis (Mute, 2008), Rob Myers (Furtherfield, 2009), Nettime discussion (2008), Gray Kochhar-Lindgren (Culture Machine), Beatrice von Bismarck (Texte zur Kunst, DE). Reuben Fowkes (Art Monthly), Karl Reitter (Grundrisse, DE), Ivan Pravdić (Filozofija i društvo).

Author, more
Editor (SR)
Publisher (EN)

Kunst und Revolution. Künstlerischer Aktivismus im langen 20. Jahrhundert (German, new ed., 2005/2017, added on 2024-1-5, EPUB)
Umetnost i revolucija. Umetnički aktivizam tokom dugog XX veka (Serbian, trans. Relja Dražić, ed. kuda.org, 2006, updated on 2015-8-30)
Art and Revolution: Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century (English, trans. Aileen Derieg, 2007, updated on 2017-6-26)
Iskusstvo i revoluciia: khudozhestvennyi aktivizm v dolgom dvadcatom veke (Russian, trans. Eugenia Shraga and Alexander Skidan, 2012, DJVU, 28 MB, updated on 2017-6-26)

Eclectic Electric Collective: The El Martillo Project (2012)

“In 2009 an inconspicuous looking suitcase was sent from Berlin to Mexico City containing a 39-foot tall inflatable silver hammer. Thus began El Martillo’s odyssey to protest the United Nations Climate Conference in Cancún. El Martillo’s short, but glorious life, climaxed when protesters from Marea Creciente (Rising Tide) stormed the conference complex fences, gigantic hammer above their heads. In full view of the press Mexican police tore the inflatable to pieces. Within an hour global the media corporations declared El Martillo a symbol of the climate changes protests as it’s image traveled across the world.

The El Martillo Project documents the whole process from its conception and construction to the media flurry it sparked off. Included are numerous full color images and documentation of the project; texts and analysis by David Graeber, Alex Dunst, and Cristian Guerrero; an interview with John Jordan from the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination; and a fold out technical manual and plan for creating giant inflatable hammers.

Initially inspired by the quote “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it,” The El Martillo Project aims to inspire creative action and joyful disobedience.”

Publisher Minor Compositions, an imprint of Autonomedia, 2012
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 Unported License
ISBN 9781570272509
64 pages

Publisher

PDF, PDF (updated on 2021-8-13)