Nathan Brown: The Limits of Fabrication: Materials Science, Materialist Poetics (2017)

“Poetry, or poiēsis, has long been understood as a practice of making. But how are experiments in the making of poetic forms related to formal making in science and engineering? The Limits of Fabrication takes up this question in the context of recent developments in nanoscale materials science, investigating concepts and ideologies of form at stake in new approaches to material construction. Tracing the direct pertinence of fields crucial to the new materials science (nanotechnology, biotechnology, crystallography, and geodesic design) in the work of Shanxing Wang, Caroline Bergvall, Christian Bök, and Ronald Johnson back to the midcentury development of Charles Olson’s ‘objectist’ poetics, Nathan Brown carves out a tradition of constructivist, nonorganic poetics that has developed in conversation with science and engineering.

While proposing a new approach to the relation of technē (craft, skill) and poiēsis (making, forming), this book also intervenes in philosophical debates concerning the concept of the object, the distinction between organic and inorganic matter, theories of self-organization, and the relation between ‘design’ and ‘nature’. Engaging with Heidegger, Agamben, Whitehead, Stiegler, and Nancy, Brown shows that materials science and materialist poetics offer crucial resources for thinking through the direction of contemporary materialist philosophy.”

Publisher Fordham University Press, New York, 2017
ISBN 9780823272990, 0823272990
xi+296 pages
via Memory of the World

Review: Tom Eyers (boundary2, 2017).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (26 MB)

Christoph Cox, Jenny Jaskey, Suhail Malik (eds.): Realism Materialism Art (2015)

“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.).

Publisher
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (14 MB)

Baylee Brits, Prudence Gibson, Amy Ireland (eds.): Aesthetics After Finitude (2016)

“Traditionally aesthetics has been associated with phenomenal experience, human apprehension and an appreciation of beauty—the domains in which human cognition is rendered finite. What is an aesthetics that might occur ‘after finitude’?”

Contributions by Marc Couroux, Prudence Gibson, Thomas Sutherland, Lendl Barcelos, Douglas Kahn, Adam Hulbert, Baylee Brits, Stephen Muecke, Laura Lotti, Christian R. Gelder, Simon O’Sullivan, Tessa Laird, Chris Shambaugh (and Maudlin Cortex), Chaim Horowitz, and Amy Ireland.

Afterword by Justin Clemens
Publisher re.press, Melbourne, Dec 2016
Anamnesis series
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND License 2.5
ISBN 9780980819793, 0980819792
241 pages

Conference (2015)
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (4 MB)