Chris Robé: Breaking the Spell: A History of Anarchist Filmmakers, Videotape Guerrillas, and Digital Ninjas (2017)

“Breaking the Spell offers the first full-length study that charts the historical trajectory of anarchist-inflected video activism from the late 1960s to the present. Two predominant trends emerge from this social movement-based video activism: 1) anarchist-inflected processes increasingly structure its production, distribution, and exhibition practices; and 2) video does not simply represent collective actions and events, but also serves as a form of activist practice in and of itself from the moment of recording to its later distribution and exhibition. Video plays an increasingly important role among activists in the growing global resistance against neoliberal capitalism. As various radical theorists have pointed out, subjectivity itself becomes a key terrain of struggle as capitalism increasingly structures and mines it through social media sites, cell phone technology, and new “flexible” work and living patterns. As a result, alternative media production becomes a central location where new collective forms of subjectivity can be created to challenge aspects of neoliberalism.

Chris Robé’s book fills in historical gaps by bringing to light unexplored video activist groups like the Cascadia Forest Defenders, eco-video activists from Eugene, Oregon; Mobile Voices, Latino day laborers harnessing cell phone technology to combat racism and police harassment in Los Angeles; and Outta Your Backpack Media, indigenous youth from the Southwest who use video to celebrate their culture and fight against marginalization. This groundbreaking study also deepens our understanding of more well-researched movements like AIDS video activism, Paper Tiger Television, and Indymedia by situating them within a longer history and wider context of radical video activism.”

Publisher PM Press, Oakland, CA, 2017
ISBN 9781629632339, 1629632333
x+469 pages

Interview with author: The New Architects (video, 2017, 43 min).
Reviews: Beth Geglia (Interface, 2017), Franklin Lopez (Fifth Estate, 2017), Patricia R. Zimmerman (Jump Cut, 2018), Allan Atliff (Anarchist Studies, 2017).

Author
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (16 MB)
Academia.edu (author)

Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! An Approach to Underground Music Scenes, 4 vols (2015-2019)

Proceedings from a series of conferences, Keep it Simple, Make it Fast! (KISMIF), held in Porto and dedicated to the analysis of punk manifestations in Portugal and elsewhere since the 1970s.

Edited by Paula Guerra (1-4), Tânia Moreira (1-3) and Thiago Pereira Alberto (4)
Publisher Universidade do Porto, Porto, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019
Open access
ISBN 9789898648495 (vol 1), 9789898648631 (vol 2), 9789898648884 (vol 3), 9789895417919 (vol 4)
584, 297, 288, 592 pages

Conf. review: Christine Feldman-Barrett (Volume!, 2016).

Conference
Research project

Volume 1 (17 MB)
Volume 2 (10 MB)
Volume 3 (9 MB)
Volume 4 (304 MB, updated on 2019-11-8)

Bruce Conner: It’s All True (2016)

“Realist. Surrealist. Hippie. Punk. Bruce Conner (1933-2008) was all of these and more. A pioneer in experimental film, collage, photography, conceptual works, and paintings, he challenged the limitations of medium, genre, and style, constantly breaking new ground. Both of and ahead of his time, Conner continues to exert influence over artists working today. Bruce Conner: It’s All True was the first comprehensive retrospective of this pivotal American artist’s output, bringing together over 250 objects in various media, including film and video, works on paper, assemblages, photographs and photograms, performance, and more. Spanning his five-decade career, the exhibition presents aspects of Conner’s work that have rarely been seen before, from paintings he made in the 1950s to photos from the Bay Area punk scene in the 1970s to video work from the 2000s, as well as numerous works produced in the last decade of his life.”

With texts by Rachel Federman, Laura Hoptman, Kellie Jones, Michelle Barger, Roger Griffith and Megan Randall, Rachel Federman, Kristine Stiles, Rudolf Frieling, Gary Garrels, Diedrich Diederichsen, Stuart Comer, Johanna Gosse, a.o.

Edited by Rudolf Frieling and Gary Garrels
Publisher San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in association with University of California Press, 2016
ISBN 9780520290563, 0520290569
384 pages

Review: Hugo Daniel (Critique d’art, 2017, FR).
Exh. reviews: Roberta Smith (New York Times), Andrea K. Scott (New Yorker), J. Hoberman (New York Review of Books), Matthew Biro (Brooklyn Rail), Maika Pollack (Aperture), Kristin M. Jones (Wall Street Journal), Kimberly Connerton (Aesthetica), Thomas Gladysz (Huff Post).

Exhibition (MoMA)
Exhibition (SFMOMA)
Exhibition (Reina Sofia)
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (35 MB)