Gérard Duménil, Dominique Lévy: The Crisis of Neoliberalism (2011)

This book examines “the great contraction” of 2007–2010 within the context of the neoliberal globalization that began in the early 1980s. This new phase of capitalism greatly enriched the top 5 percent of Americans, including capitalists and financial managers, but at a significant cost to the country as a whole. Declining domestic investment in manufacturing, unsustainable household debt, rising dependence on imports and financing, and the growth of a fragile and unwieldy global financial structure threaten the strength of the dollar. Unless these trends are reversed, the authors predict, the U.S. economy will face sharp decline.

Summarizing a large amount of troubling data, the authors show that manufacturing has declined from 40 percent of GDP to under 10 percent in thirty years. Since consumption drives the American economy and since manufactured goods comprise the largest share of consumer purchases, clearly we will not be able to sustain the accumulating trade deficits.

Rather than blame individuals, such as Greenspan or Bernanke, the authors focus on larger forces. Repairing the breach in our economy will require limits on free trade and the free international movement of capital; policies aimed at improving education, research, and infrastructure; reindustrialization; and the taxation of higher incomes.

Publisher Harvard University Press, 2011
ISBN 0674049888, 9780674049888
400 pages

Interview with Gérard Duménil: Part 1, Part 2 (The Real News Network)

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From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010) (2011) [multiling]

The publication explores practices of critical contemporary fine arts – practices of research, progressive and experimental actions by contemporary fine artists from the 1990s to the present, in four countries in the region – Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia. These are practices which focus on issues such as identity aspects (national, cultural, religious, ethnic), workers’ rights, social integration of minorities, global market fluctuation trends and its impact in the local context, unscrupulousness of capital, the position of women, spatial devastation, art institution system issues, and many others.

The publication maps out and theoretically reviews critical and research practices, and contemporary fine arts practices oriented towards the contemporary civilization moment, which have been active in the context of the independent cultural scene since the 1990s, but which have also been present in the institutional frame. The authors provide only drafts of the political, social, economic and cultural changes of the local contexts, through four segments, due to a lack of space. Each segment focuses on the practices and context of a given country, i.e. the capital as the primary focus, and in addition to the introductory word by the authors, it includes interviews (with authors, theorists, curators, organizers…) who contribute to the recording of these artistic practices based on their experience, work and knowledge.

The segments deal with the Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, and Zagreb scenes. All the authors devised their approaches in an effort to present the fruitful and creative production of these cities, to the greatest extent possible.

Contemporary visual art is discussed through the works and experiences of Igor Grubić, Sanja Iveković, Andreja Kulunčić and Darko Šimičić (Croatia), Stevan Vuković, Milica Tomić, Danilo Prnjat and Živko Grozdanić Gera (Serbia), Neven Korda, Marko Peljhan, Marija Mojca Pungerčar and Maja Smrekar (Slovenia), and Bojan Ivanov, Zoran Poposki, Mira Gakina and Žaneta Vangeli (Macedonia).

The book was conceived as a multilingual publication in English, in addition to the local languages (Croatia, Macedonian, Serbian and Slovenian).

Realized as part of the project Let’s Talk Critic Arts.

Editorial Board: Dušan Dovč, Vesna Milosavljević, Jasna Soptrajanova and Dea Vidović
Authors: Jasna Jakšić – in cooperation with Tihana Bertek, Maja Gujinović, Ana Kovačić, Srđan Latreza, Petra Novak, Tina Novak, Tamara Sertić and Leda Sutlović (Croatia); Nebojša Vilić (Macedonia); Miha Colner and Nika Grabar (Slovenia); Vesna Tašić – in cooperation with Vesna Milosavljević and Miroljub Marjanović (Serbia)
Publishers: SEEcult.org in cooperation with ForumSkopje; Kurziv – Platform for Matters of Culture, Media and Society; SCCA, Center for Contemporary Arts – Ljubljana / Artservis; The Association of NGOs Clubture
Published in April 2011, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Skopje
611 pages
This work is made available by the Creative Commons Licence Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported unless not stated differently.

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Image, Time and Motion: New Media Critique from Turkey (2011)

This reader is a collection of essays written by Turkish graduate students between 2003 and 2010 for Andreas Treske’s seminar ‘Image, Time and Motion’ at Bilkent University in Ankara, revised and actualized in 2010. Coming from a wide range of disciplines they had studied before, very rarely media or cultural studies, these students brought in their various viewpoints and methods, and tried to integrate their observations and understandings in a seminar related to cinema and new media to discuss and sometimes just to describe the influences of digital media technologies for themselves and their colleagues. Starting from the premise that digital technology redefines our moving image culture, the authors reflect in their essays various kind of approaches and methods, experiences and practices, descriptive, critical and interdisciplinary.

Contributors: Pelin Aytemiz, Bestem Büyüm, I. Alev Degim, Bilge Demirtas, Fulya Ertem, Deniz Hasirci, Cagri Baris Kasap, Zeynep Kocer, Rifat Süha Kocoglu, Leyla Önal, Ufuk Önen, Didem Özkul, Segah Sak, Ayda Sevin, Umut Sumnu, Andreas Treske and Funda Senova Tunali.

Edited by: Andreas Treske, Ufuk Onen, Bestem Büyüm and I. Alev Degim
Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2011
Theory on Demand series, No 7
ISBN: 978-90-816021-5-0
146 pages

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