Semiotext(e), 3(2): Schizo-Culture (1978)

“Semiotext(e) began in 1974 as a journal started by French philosopher Sylvère Lotringer in an effort to bridge radical French theory and the intellectual and art worlds of New York City. The original editorial board included ten people, mostly graduate students at Columbia University where Lotringer teaches, who chipped in fifty dollars apiece to get the journal started. They held their first conference in 1975: the Schizo-Culture conference on prisons and madness. Speakers included Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault, and Jean-François Lyotard, now all staples of the Semiotext(e) backlist.” (from Wikipedia)

With contributions by Kathy Acker, Lee Breuer, William Burroughs, John Cage, David Cooper, Gilles Deleuze, Douglas Dunn, Richard Foreman, Michel Foucault, John Giorno, Phil Glass, Christopher Knowles, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Ulrike Meinhof, Jack Smith, Robert Wilson, and others.

Edited by Sylvère Lotringer
Publisher Semiotext(e), New York, 1978
ISSN 00939579
221 pages

PDF (8 MB, updated on 2013-12-8)

See also Semiotext(e), 3(1): Nietzsche’s Return (1978).

Rosalyn Deutsche: Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics (1996)

“Since the 1980s a great deal has been written on the relationship between art, architecture, and urban planning and design, on the one hand, and the politics of space on the other. In Evictions Rosalyn Deutsche investigates—and protests against—the dominant uses of this interdisciplinary discourse.

Deutsche argues that critics on both the left and the right invoke harmonious images of space that conceal and justify exclusions—whether the space in question is a city, park, institution, exhibition, identity, or work of art. By contrast, she calls for a democratic spatial critique that takes account of the conflicts that produce and maintain all spaces, including the space of politics itself.

Evictions examines how aesthetic and urban ideologies were combined during the last decade to legitimize urban redevelopment programs that claimed to be beneficial to all, yet in reality tried to expunge traditional working classes from the city. Combining critical aesthetic theory about the social production of art with critical urban theory about the social production of space, Deutsche exposes this unspoken agenda. She then responds to a new alliance of prominent urban and cultural scholars who use critical spatial theory to protect traditional left political projects against the challenges posed by new radical cultural practices.

In her critique, Deutsche mobilizes feminist and postmodern ideas about the politics of visual representation and subjectivity. She also intervenes in debates taking place in art, architecture, and urban studies about the meaning of public space, and places these struggles within broader contests over the definition of democracy. Opposing the nostalgic belief that democracy’s survival demands the recovery of a once unified public sphere, Deutsche contends that conflict, far from undermining public space, is a prerequisite for its existence and growth.”

Publisher MIT Press, 1996
Graham Foundation / MIT Press Series in Contemporary Architectural Discourse
ISBN 0262041588, 9780262041584
394 pages

Review: Hayes (H-Urban, 1997).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2015-2-19)

Krzysztof Wodiczko: Critical Vehicles: Writings, Projects, Interviews (1999)

“Krzysztof Wodiczko, one of the most original avant-garde artists of our time, is perhaps best known for the politically charged images he has projected onto buildings and monuments from New York to Warsaw—images of rockets projected onto triumphal arches, the image of handcuffed wrists projected onto a courthouse facade, images of homeless people in bandages and wheelchairs projected onto statues in a park from which they had been evicted. In projects such as the “Homeless Vehicle,” which he designed through discussions with homeless people, Wodiczko has helped to make public space a place where marginalized people can speak, establish their presence, and assert their rights.

Critical Vehicles is the first book in English to collect Wodiczko’s own writings on his projects. Wodiczko has stated that his principal artistic concern is the displacement of traditional notions of community and identity in the face of rapidly expanding technologies and cultural miscommunication. In these writings he addresses such issues as urbanism, homelessness, immigration, alienation, and the plight of refugees. Fusing wit and sophisticated political insight, he offers the artistic means to help heal the damages of uprootedness and other contemporary troubles.”

Publisher MIT Press, 1999
Writing Art series
ISBN 0262731223, 9780262731225
227 pages

Review: Ben Highmore (Art History, 2001).

publisher

PDF (updated on 2012-11-19)