Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979 (1998)

2 January 2012, dusan

“The rise of performance art, and its merging with more traditional forms like painting and sculpture, is the great revolution of post-war art. Its links to theater, photography, music, dance, politics, and popular culture have made it especially appealing to contemporary artists in remote areas; more than any other movement in recent art, performance has found a place throughout the world.

Covering three decades of significant and original art, this book features work by more than one hundred artists from the United States, South America, Eastern and Western Europe, and Japan who have had a profound impact on the relationship between visual and performance art in the postwar era. Among the artists included are Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, John Cage, Lygia Clark, Yves Klein, Marta Minujin, Bruce Nauman, Helio Oiticica, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Robert Rauschenberg, Niki de Saint Phalle, Atsuko Tanaka, and Jean Tinguely. Their work encompasses performative objects such as sculpture, artists’ publications, drawings, photographs, and ephemera that come from performances, as well as documentary film and video stills.

Published in conjunction with a major exhibition, organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, curated by Paul Schimmel (08.02.1998–10.05.1998), Out of Actions illuminates the unique relationship between action, destruction, performance, and the creative process. Covering an unprecedented range of material, both nationally and temporally, the book offers the first critical comparisons.”

Edited by Paul Schimmel, Russel Ferguson, Kristine Stiles
Publisher Thames and Hudson, 1998
ISBN 9780500280508
407 pages

Review: Beáta Hock (Artpool, n.d.).

PDF (104 MB, no OCR; updated on 2017-7-10)

Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Jakob Jakobsen (eds.): Expect Anything Fear Nothing: The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere (2011)

21 October 2011, dusan

“This volume is the first English-language presentation of the Scandinavian Situationists and their role in the Situationist movement. The Situationist movement was an international movement of artists, writers and thinkers that in the 1950s and 1960s tried to revolutionize the world through rejecting bourgeois art and critiquing the post-World War Two capitalist consumer society.

The book contains articles, conversations and statements by former members of the Situationists’ organisations as well as contemporary artists, activists, scholars and writers. While previous publications about the Situationist movement almost exclusively have focused on the contribution of the French section and in particular on the role of the Guy Debord this book aims to shed light on the activities of the Situationists active in places like Denmark, Sweden and Holland. The themes and stories chronicled include: The anarchist undertakings of the Drakabygget movement led by the rebel artists Jørgen Nash, Hardy Strid and Jens Jørgen Thorsen, the exhibition by the Situationist International “Destruction of RSG-6” in 1963 in Odense organised by the painter J.V. Martin in collaboration with Guy Debord, the journal The Situationist Times edited by Jacqueline de Jong, Asger Jorn’s political critique of natural science and the films of the Drakabygget movement.”

Contributors: Peter Laugesen, Carl Nørrested, Fabian Tompsett, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Jacqueline de Jong, Gordon Fazakerley, Hardy Strid, Karen Kurczynski, Stewart Home, Jakob Jakobsen.

Publisher Nebula, Copenhagen; in association with Autonomedia, New York, 2011
Open access
ISBN 879936512X, 9788799365128
288 pages

Reviews: Kim West (Kunstkritikk, 2011), Lugo (2011).

Publisher

PDF, PDF (9 MB)

See also Bolt, Jakobsen (eds.), Cosmonauts of the Future: Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere, 2015.
More on Situationists

McKenzie Wark: The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (2011)

19 October 2011, dusan

“Over fifty years after the Situationist International appeared, its legacy continues to inspire activists, artists and theorists around the world. Such a legend has accrued to this movement that the story of the SI now demands to be told in a contemporary voice capable of putting it into the context of twenty-first-century struggles.

McKenzie Wark delves into the Situationists’ unacknowledged diversity, revealing a world as rich in practice as it is in theory. Tracing the group’s development from the bohemian Paris of the ’50s to the explosive days of May ’68, Wark’s take on the Situationists is biographically and historically rich, presenting the group as an ensemble creation, rather than the brainchild and dominion of its most famous member, Guy Debord. Roaming through Europe and the lives of those who made up the movement—including Constant, Asger Jorn, Michèle Bernstein, Alex Trocchi and Jacqueline De Jong—Wark uncovers an international movement riven with conflicting passions.

Accessible to those who have only just discovered the Situationists and filled with new insights, The Beach Beneath the Street rereads the group’s history in the light of our contemporary experience of communications, architecture, and everyday life. The Situationists tried to escape the world of twentieth-century spectacle and failed in the attempt. Wark argues that they may still help us to escape the twenty-first century, while we still can …”

Publisher Verso, London, 2011
ISBN 1844677206, 9781844677207
224 pages

Reviews: Christopher Collier (Mute), Anthony Hayes (Marx&Philosophy), Ian Birchall (Review31), Brettany Shannon (Society&Space), Ben Brucato (Humanity&Society), Karl Whitney (3AM), Vince Carducci (PopMatters), Andrew McCann (Sydney Review of Books), Gary Pearce (Steep Stairs), Jonathan Derbyshire (The Guardian), Andrew Blake (The Independent), Edwin Heathcote (Financial Times).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2019-2-9)