Cornelia Sollfrank, Felix Stalder, Shusha Niederberger (eds.): Aesthetics of the Commons (2021)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, affect, archive, art, care, commons, digital culture, infrastructure, knowledge, library, piracy, shadow library, theory
“What do a feminist server, an art space located in a public park in North London, a ‘pirate’ library of high cultural value yet dubious legal status, and an art school that emphasizes collectivity have in common? They all demonstrate that art can play an important role in imagining and producing a real quite different from what is currently hegemonic; that art has the possibility to not only envision or proclaim ideas in theory, but also to realize them materially.
Aesthetics of the Commons examines a series of artistic and cultural projects—drawn from what can loosely be called the (post)digital—that take up this challenge in different ways. What unites them, however, is that they all have a ‘double character.’ They are art in the sense that they place themselves in relation to (Western) cultural and art systems, developing discursive and aesthetic positions, but, at the same time, they are ‘operational’ in that they create recursive environments and freely available resources whose uses exceed these systems. The first aspect raises questions about the kind of aesthetics that are being embodied, the second creates a relation to the larger concept of the ‘commons.’ In Aesthetics of the Commons, the commons are understood not as a fixed set of principles that need to be adhered to in order to fit a definition, but instead as a ‘thinking tool’—in other words, the book’s interest lies in what can be made visible by applying the framework of the commons as a heuristic device.”
Contributors: Olga Goriunova, Jeremy Gilbert, Judith Siegmund, Daphne Dragona, Magdalena Tyzlik-Carver, Gary Hall, Ines Kleesattel, Sophie Toupin, Rahel Puffert and Christoph Brunner.
Publisher diaphanes, Zürich, January 2021
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 License
ISBN 9783035803914
275 pages
Reviews: Gerald Raunig (transversal, 2021, DE), Jaime Groetsema (ARLIS/NA, 2021), Agnieszka Wodzińska (Network Cultures blog, 2021), Alessandro Ludovico (Neural, 2021).
Project website
Book launch
Publisher
WorldCat
See also Open Scores: How to Program the Commons (2020).
Comment (0)David M. Halperin, Valerie Traub (eds.): Gay Shame (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · identity, lgbtq, queer, queer theory, theory
“Ever since the 1969 Stonewall Riots, “gay pride” has been the rallying cry of the gay rights movement and the political force behind the emergence of the field of lesbian and gay studies. But has something been lost, forgotten, or buried beneath the drive to transform homosexuality from a perversion to a proud social identity? Have the political requirements of gay pride repressed discussion of the more uncomfortable or undignified aspects of homosexuality?
Gay Shame seeks to lift this unofficial ban on the investigation of homosexuality and shame by presenting critical work from the most vibrant frontier in contemporary queer studies. An esteemed list of contributors tackles a range of issues—questions of emotion, disreputable sexual histories, dissident gender identities, and embarrassing figures and moments in gay history—as they explore the possibility of reclaiming shame as a new, even productive, way to examine lesbian and gay culture.”
Publisher Chicago University Press, 2009
ISBN 9780226314372, 0226314375
x+395 pages
via Flux
Reviews: Victor Stepien (Journal of Homosexuality, 2012), Karsten Schubert (hugs&kisses, 2012, DE).
PDF (6 MB, updated on 2021-1-10)
Comment (0)Crisis & Critique 7(3): 2020 – The Year of the Virus. SARS 2 / COVID 19 (2020)
Filed under journal | Tags: · biopolitics, climate crisis, critique, necropolitics, pandemic, philosophy, politics, theory, virus
“The present issue of Crisis and Critique brings together an array of thinkers who all in their singular way deal with the effects of the virus, with how the pandemic was registered, with its resonances, with what kind of problems it potentially made visible or what kind of issues it brought to the fore, including the narcissistic tendency of “theory”, broadly speaking itself.”
Contributors: Étienne Balibar, Andrea Cavalletti, Justin Clemens, Alexander García Düttmann, Roberto Esposito, Isabelle Garo, Bue Rübner Hansen, Wang Hui, Elena Louisa Lange and Joshua Pickett-Depaolis, Álvaro García Linera, Michael Löwy, Artemy Magun & Michael Marder, Catherine Malabou, Todd McGowan, Warren Montag, Jean-Luc Nancy, Nick Nesbitt, Michael Roberts, Kim Stanley Robinson, Natalia Romé, Vladimir Safatle, Göran Therborn, Alberto Toscano, Gabriel Tupinambá et al, Raquel Varela & Roberto della Santa, Fabio Vighi, Sophie Wahnich, Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar, Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda.
Edited by Agon Hamza & Frank Ruda
Publisher KMD (Kolektivi materializmi dialektik), Prishtina, November 2020
Open access
ISSN 2311-5475
502 pages