Armand Mattelart, Seth Siegelaub (eds.): Communication and Class Struggle, 2: Liberation, Socialism (1983)

2 September 2015, dusan

Communication and Class Struggle, a two-volume work, is the first general marxist anthology of writings on communication, information and culture. Its purpose is to analyse the relationship between the practice and theory of communication and their development with the context of class struggle. Armand Mattelart and Seth Siegelaub, the editors, have selected more 128 essential marxist and progressive texts originating in over 50 countries and written since the mid-nineteenth century to explain three interrelated phenomena: (1) how basic social, economic and cultural processes condition communication; (2) how bourgeois communication practice and theory have developed as part of the capitalistic mode of production; and (3) how in the struggle against exploitation and oppression, the popular and working classes have developed their own communication practice and theory, liberated mode of communication, culture and daily life.

The second volume provides an analysis of the development of popular and working-class communication and culture, its theory and practice under different political-social and historical conditions, and its contemporary expression. The book contains 64 texts. 38 are published for the first time in English, and some texts appear for the first time in any language. In addition, it includes a 650-entry bibliography.” (from the back cover)

Publisher International General, New York, and International Mass Media Research Center (IMMRC), Bagnolet, 1983
ISBN 0884770192, 9780884770190
438 pages

Review: Dallas W. Smythe (Journal of Communication 1985, p 218ff).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (40 MB, updated to OCR’d version on 2017-10-30 via Memory of the World)
See also Volume 1.

Ilya Kabakov: The 1960s and 1970s: Notes on Unofficial Life in Moscow (1999) [RU, EN]

11 August 2015, dusan

A memoir, originally written in 1982 and 1986, by the Russian conceptual artist now living in the United States. “He belongs to the generation of underground (or nonconformist) artists that emerged with the liberalization of domestic policies in the Soviet Union in the 1960s during the Krushchev “thaw”. That generation formed a subculture in resistance to the ideological settings of “official art”, of Socialist Realism, as well as to Soviet ideology and the life style of ‘homo sovieticus’. This book is a memoir of the ‘underground years’ and offers a unique insider’s perspective on artistic life during a period of ‘prohibition’ through an exploration of the tension between totalitarian politics and resistance aesthetics.” (from a review by Volha Isakava)

60-е-70-е. записки о неофициальной жизни в Москве
Publisher Gesellschaft zur Förderung Slawistischer Studien, Vienna, 1999
Wiener Slawistischer Almanach. Sonderbände, 47
Digital edition by Otto Sagner, Munich, 2012
ISBN 9783954796380
267 pages

Conversation with Ilya and Emilia Kabakov (Anton Vidokle, e-flux, 2012, EN)

Reviews: Volha Isakava (Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2005, EN), Julianne Fürst (Kritika, 2013, EN).
Commentary: Keti Chukhrov (2010, EN).

Publisher

JPGs, PDF (RU)
PDF (8 MB, RU)
Short excerpt in English translation

Harun Farocki: Nachdruck / Imprint – Texte / Writings (2001) [DE/EN]

30 July 2015, dusan

“This book brings together a selection of writings produced by Harun Farocki between 1977 and 1999. They provide an insight into Farocki’s filmic work and its underlying querying of the status, production, and perception of images conveyed technically and through media. As a critical observer of political and cultural events, Farocki reveals the images’ hidden content in his films and writings, freeing them from the detritus of the encoding with which they have been covered in the course of their development, their use in various media and subsequent reception. Farocki’s deconstructive reflections establish new standards not only for the aesthetics of film but for visual art as well.”

Published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition of Harun Farocki at the Westfälischer Kunstverein and Filmclub Münster, June-August 2001.

Edited by Susanne Gänsheimer and Nicolaus Schafhausen
Introduction by Volker Pantenburg
English translation by Laurent Faasch-Ibrahim
Publisher Vorwerk 8, Berlin, and Lukas & Sternberg, New York, 2001
ISBN 393091641X, 9783930916412
323 pages
via niccadena

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (45 MB)