Hans Haacke: Working Conditions: The Writings of Hans Haacke (2016)

“Hans Haacke’s art articulates the interdependence of multiple elements. An artwork is not merely an object but is also its context—the economic, social, and political conditions of the art world and the world at large. Among his best-known works are MoMA-Poll (1970), which polled museumgoers on their opinions about Nelson Rockefeller and the Nixon administration’s Indochina policy; Gallery-Goers’ Birthplace and Residence Profile (1969), which canvassed visitors to the Howard Wise Gallery in Manhattan; and the famously canceled 1971 solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, which was meant to display, among other things, works on two New York real estate empires.

This volume collects writings by Haacke that explain and document his practice. The texts, some of which have never before been published, run from straightforward descriptions to wide-ranging reflections and full-throated polemics. They include correspondence with MoMA and the Guggenheim and a letter refusing to represent the United States at the 1969 São Paulo Biennial; the title piece, “Working Conditions,” which discusses corporate influence on the art world; Haacke’s thinking about “real-time social systems”; and texts written for museum catalogs on various artworks, including GERMANIA, in the German Pavilion of the 1993 Venice Biennial; DER BEVÖLKERUNG (To the Population) of 2000 at the Berlin Reichstag; Mixed Messages, an exhibition of objects from the Victoria and Albert Museum (2001); and Gift Horse, unveiled on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2015.”

Edited and with an Introduction by Alexander Alberro
Publisher MIT Press, 2016
Writing Art series
ISBN 9780262034838, 0262034832
lii+290 pages

Review: Greg Lindquist (Brooklyn Rail, 2016), Sophie Cras (Critique d’art, 2016, FR), Chelsea Weathers (CAA Reviews, 2018).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (7 MB, updated on 2023-2-14)

Culture as Organization in Early Soviet Thought: Bogdanov, Eisenstein, and the Proletkult (2016)

“This anthology brings together a group of film researchers, historians, political scientists and systems scientists to discuss historical and contemporary tangential points between the sciences and the arts in Russia during the first decades of the twentieth century. All chapters provide new insights into linkages between the arts, philosophy and other disciplines during this period. Tangential points between early Russian systems thinking and approaches to montage that were being developed within the film community are examined in detail. The contributing authors focus on two thinkers: the filmmaker, Sergei M. Eisenstein and the systems theorist, Aleksandr A. Bogdanov.”

The book is published in an interactive format inspired by Eisenstein’s idea of the “Spherical Book”, organising chapters in a thematic modular way, allowing for multiple reading perspectives.

Edited by Pia Tikka, with John Biggart, Vesa Oittinen, Giulia Rispoli, and Maja Soboleva
Publisher Aalto University School of Arts Design and Architecture, Helsinki, 2016
Tangential Points series
ISBN 9789526000763

Publisher

PDFs on demand

Continent. 5(2): The Technosphere, Now (2016)

“The “technosphere” is geologist Peter Haff’s term for the planetary-scale networks of transport, information, energy and media operating at a scale and functional efficacy that we can now compare with geological and climatic forces—the soils and rocks of the lithosphere, the waters of the hydrosphere or the winds of the atmosphere. Its emergence as a thematic is driven by the same witnessing of intertwining natural environments, vast socio-technical forces, and increasingly diverse technological species and spaces that has precipitated discussions of the Anthropocene.

[…] The Technosphere project at the HKW in Berlin (2015-18) began with an initial gathering in Autumn 2015. The first occasion for the ongoing collaboration between continent. and HKW was the latter’s hosting of The Technosphere, Now event in October, 2015 in Berlin. Editors from continent. came from various corners of the globe, invited to immerse themselves into and extrapolate from the talks, discussions, presentations and demonstrations held there. Interview-discussions held with the likewise international set of researchers, theorists, artists and scientists at this event precipitated an online special issue of continent. for April 2016, featuring articles titled by the names of our interviewees.”

Features interviews with Arno Rosemarin, Birgit Schneider, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Donald MacKenzie, Erich Hörl, Jennifer Gabrys, Lino Camprubí, Lucy A. Suchman, Mark Hansen, Masahiro Terada, Mushon Zer-Aviv, Oliver Sann, Peter K. Haff, S. Løchlann Jain, and Scott Gabriel Knowles.

Edited by Nina Jäger, Paul Boshears, Bernhard Garnicnig, Jamie Allen, Lital Khaikin, Katrin Klingan, Anna Sophie Luhn, Christoph Rosol, and Nick Hood
Publisher continent., Apr 2016
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
ISSN 2159-9920

HTML, PDFs