Hito Steyerl: The Wretched of the Screen (2012–) [EN, ES]
Filed under book | Tags: · art, art theory, capitalism, contemporary art, democracy, image, politics

“In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image.
Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings.”
With Introduction by Franco “Bifo” Berardi
Publisher Sternberg Press, Berlin, September 2012
e-flux journal series
ISBN 9781934105825, 1934105821
200 pages
Reviews: Tony Wood (New Left Review, 2013), Maria Walsh (Art Monthly, 2013), McKenzie Wark (Public Seminar, 2015), Fracesca Da Rimini (ArtLink, 2015).
Exh. reviews: Holland Cotter (NY Times, 2012), Zoe Larkins (Art in America, 2012).
Editors
Publisher (EN)
Publisher (ES)
WorldCat (EN)
The Wretched of the Screen (English, 2012)
Los condenados de la pantalla (Spanish, trans. Marcelo Expósito, 2014, added on 2015-12-14)
Caleb Kelly (ed.): Sound (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · acoustics, art, art criticism, art history, contemporary art, listening, music, music theory, noise, silence, sound art, sound recording

“Sound is one of a series documenting major themes and ideas in contemporary art.
The ‘sonic turn’ in recent art reflects a wider cultural awareness that sight no longer dominates our perception or understanding of contemporary reality. The background buzz of myriad mechanically reproduced sounds increasingly mediates our lives. Tuning in to this incessant auditory stimulus some of our most influential artists have investigated the corporeal, cultural and political resonance.
In tandem with recent experimental music and technology, art has opened up to hitherto excluded dimensions of noise, silence and the act of listening. Artists working with sound have engaged in new forms of aesthetic encounter with the city and nature, the everyday and cultural otherness, technological effects and psychological states.
New perspectives on sound have generated a wave of scholarship in musicology, cultural studies and the social sciences. But the equally important rise of sound in the arts since 1960 has so far been sparsely documented. This volume is the first sourcebook to provide, through original critical writings and artists’ statements, a genealogy of sonic pathways into the arts; philosophical reflections on the meanings of noise and silence; dialogues between art and music; investigations of the role of listening and acoustic space; and a comprehensive survey of sound works by international artists from the avant-garde era to the present.”
Artists surveyed include Marina Abramović, Vito Acconci, Doug Aitken, Maryanne Amacher, Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Kim Cascone, Martin Creed, Paul DeMarinis, Bill Fontana, Kim Gordon, Dan Graham, Ryoji Ikeda, Mike Kelley, Christina Kubisch, Bernhard Leitner, Alvin Lucier, Len Lye, Christian Marclay, Max Neuhaus, Carsten Nicolai, Hermann Nitsch, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Luigi Russolo, Karin Sander, Mieko Shiomi, Michael Snow and Bill Viola.
Writers include Ralph T. Coe, Christoph Cox, Suzanne Delehanty, William Furlong, Liam Gillick, Paul Hegarty, Branden W. Joseph, Douglas Kahn, Dan Lander, W.J.T. Mitchell, Michael Nyman, R. Murray Schafer, Michel Serres, David Toop and Paul Virilio.
Publisher Whitechapel Gallery, London, with MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011
Documents of Contemporary Art series
ISBN 0854881875, 9780854881871
239 pages
review (Neural)
review (Sophie Hoyle, an)
PDF (biographies on pp 224-227 are missing)
Comments (3)Pierre Bourdieu, Hans Haacke: Free Exchange (1994–)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, censorship, contemporary art, institutional critique, multiculturalism, sociology, sociology of art

“How can we affirm the independence of critical artists and intellectuals when confronted by the new crusaders of Western culture, the neoconservative champions of morality and good taste, the sponsorship of multinationals and the patronage theorists who have lost all touch with reality? How can we safeguard the world of free exchange which is and must remain the world of artists, writers and scholars?
These are some of the questions discussed by the leading social thinker Pierre Bourdieu and the artist Hans Haacke in this remarkable book. Their frank and open dialogue on contemporary art and culture ranges widely, from censorship and obscenity to the social conditions of artistic creativity. Among the examples they discuss are the controversies surrounding the exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, the debates concerning multiculturalism and ethnic diversity, and the uses of art as a means of contesting and disrupting symbolic domination. They also explore the central themes of Hans Haacke’s work, which is used to illustrate the book.
Free Exchange is a timely intervention in current debates and a powerful analysis of the conditions and concerns of critical artists and intellectuals today.”
First published in French as Libre-échange, Éditions de Seuil/les presses du réel, 1994
Publisher Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, in association with Blackwell Publishers, 1995
ISBN 0745615228, 0745615228
144 pages
Reviews: Jennifer Peterson (Chicago Review), Vincent Dubois (Politix, FR).
PDF (no OCR, black&white)
PDF (no OCR, added on 2023-8-10)