Jon K Shaw, Theo Reeves-Evision (eds.): Fiction as Method (2017)

“See the world through the eyes of a search engine, if only for a millisecond; throw the workings of power into sharper relief by any media necessary; reveal access points to other worlds within our own. In the anthology Fiction as Method, a mixture of new and established names in the fields of contemporary art, media theory, philosophy, and speculative fiction explore the diverse ways fiction manifests, and provide insights into subjects ranging from the hive mind of the art collective 0rphan Drift to the protocols of online self-presentation. With an extended introduction by the editors, the book invites reflection on how fictions proliferate, take on flesh, and are carried by a wide variety of mediums—including, but not limited to, the written word. In each case, fiction is bound up with the production and modulation of desire, the enfolding of matter and meaning, and the blending of practices that cast the existing world in a new light with those that participate in the creation of new openings of the possible.”

Texts by Justin Barton, Tim Etchells, Matthew Fuller, David Garcia, Dora García, M. John Harrison, Simon O’Sullivan, Jon K Shaw and Theo Reeves-Evison, Delphi Carstens & Mer Roberts, Erica Scourti

Publisher Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2017
ISBN 3956793641, 9783956793646
365 pages

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (49 MB)

Alex Zamalin: Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism (2019)

“Within the history of African American struggle against racist oppression that often verges on dystopia, a hidden tradition has depicted a transfigured world. Daring to speculate on a future beyond white supremacy, black utopian artists and thinkers offer powerful visions of ways of being that are built on radical concepts of justice and freedom. They imagine a new black citizen who would inhabit a world that soars above all existing notions of the possible.

In Black Utopia, Alex Zamalin offers a groundbreaking examination of African American visions of social transformation and their counterutopian counterparts. Considering figures associated with racial separatism, postracialism, anticolonialism, Pan-Africanism, and Afrofuturism, he argues that the black utopian tradition continues to challenge American political thought and culture. Black Utopia spans black nationalist visions of an ideal Africa, the fiction of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Sun Ra’s cosmic mythology of alien abduction. Zamalin casts Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler as political theorists and reflects on the antiutopian challenges of George S. Schuyler and Richard Wright. Their thought proves that utopianism, rather than being politically immature or dangerous, can invigorate political imagination. Both an inspiring intellectual history and a critique of present power relations, this book suggests that, with democracy under siege across the globe, the black utopian tradition may be our best hope for combating injustice.”

Publisher Columbia University Press, New York, 2019
ISBN 9780231187404, 0231187408
x+182 pages

Reviews: Smaran Dayal (Social Text, 2020), David A. Lemke (Utopian Studies, 2020), Francis Shor (J American History, 2020), Ladee Hubbard (TLS, 2019).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF

Mike Kelley: Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile (1986)

Publisher New City Editions, Venice, CA, and Artists Space, New York, 1986
98 pages

Review: Artforum (1987).
Commentary: Jori Finkel (LAMA, 2014).

Exhibition (Metro Pictures, New York, 1986)
WorldCat

PDF (19 MB)
MP3 (Performed live with Sonic Youth, Molly Cleator and Adam Rudolf at Artists Space, New York, 5 December 1986. Recorded by Carole Parkinson. 38 min, via UbuWeb)