Laura Poitras, et al.: Astro Noise: A Survival Guide for Living Under Total Surveillance (2016)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, drones, free software, privacy, surveillance, technology, war on terror

“The filmmaker, artist, and journalist Laura Poitras has explored the themes of mass surveillance, “war on terror,” drone program, Guantánamo, and torture in her work for more than ten years. For this volume, Poitras has invited authors ranging from artists and novelists to technologists and academics to respond to the modern-day state of mass surveillance. Some contributors worked directly with Poitras and the archive of documents leaked by Snowden; others contributed fictional reinterpretations of spycraft. The result is a “how-to” guide for living in a society that collects extraordinary amounts of information on individuals. Questioning the role of surveillance and advocating for collective privacy are central tennets for Poitras, who has long engaged with and supported free-software technologists.”
Contributions by Ai Weiwei, Jacob Appelbaum, Lakhdar Boumediene, Kate Crawford, Alex Danchev, Cory Doctorow, Dave Eggers, Jill Magid, Trevor Paglen, Edward Snowden, and Hito Steyerl.
With an Introduction by Jay Sanders
Publisher Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2016
ISBN 9780300217650, 030021765X
241 pages
via i_d_rather_be_no_one
Review: Bernard E. Harcourt (Critical Inquiry).
PDF (17 MB)
Comment (0)Christoph Cox, Jenny Jaskey, Suhail Malik (eds.): Realism Materialism Art (2015)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, art theory, materialism, matter, object, object-oriented ontology, philosophy, realism, representation, speculative realism, technology, theory

“Realism Materialism Art (RMA) introduces a diverse selection of new realist and materialist philosophies and examines their ramifications on the arts. Encompassing neo-materialist theories, object-oriented ontologies, and neo-rationalist philosophies, RMA serves as a primer on ‘speculative realism,’ considering its conceptual innovations as spurs to artistic thinking and practice and beyond. Despite their differences, these philosophical positions propose that thought can and does think outside itself, and that reality can be known without its being shaped by and for human comprehension. Today’s realisms and materialisms explicitly challenge many of the dominant assumptions of cultural practice and theoretical inquiry, opening up new domains of research and artistic inquiry.”
Contributions by Armen Avanessian, Elie Ayache, Amanda Beech, Ray Brassier, Mikko Canini, Diana Coole, Christoph Cox, Manuel DeLanda, Diedrich Diederichsen, Tristan Garcia, Iain Hamilton Grant, Elizabeth Grosz, Boris Groys, Graham Harman, Terry Horgan, Jenny Jaskey, Katerina Kolozova, James Ladyman, François Laruelle, Nathan Lee, Suhail Malik, Quentin Meillassoux, Reza Negarestani, John Ó Maoilearca, Trevor Paglen, Luciana Parisi, Matthew Poole, Matjaž Potrč, João Ribas, Matthew Ritchie, Alicia Ritson, Susan Schuppli, Steven Shaviro, Nick Srnicek, Achim Szepanski, Eugene Thacker, McKenzie Wark, Andy Weir.
Publisher Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, NY, and Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2015
ISBN 9783956791260, 3956791266
403 pages
Reviews: Ilse van Rijn (Open, 2015), Hatty Nestor (Review31, n.d.).
PDF (14 MB)
Comment (0)Marie-Luise Angerer: Ecology of Affect: Intensive Milieus and Contingent Encounters (2017) [German, English]
Filed under book | Tags: · affect, body, ecology, media, media theory, technology

“The way we conceive the human today is particularly affected by the shifts in media technology during the 20th century. Affect emerges as the new liminal concept that renders the body compatible in novel ways with the technology and politics of media. By ways of a relational reorganization the organic end technological life is condensed in a new, intense way to an ecology of affects.”
English edition
Translated by Gerrit Jackson
Preface by Felicity Colman
Publisher meson.press, Lüneburg, Apr 2017
Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 International License
ISBN 9783957960955
68 pages
Ecology of Affect: Intensive Milieus and Contingent Encounters: PDF, PDF
Affektökologie: Intensive Milieus und zufällige Begegnungen: PDF, PDF