Hito Steyerl: Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War (2017)

“What is the function of art in the era of digital globalization?

How can one think of art institutions in an age defined by planetary civil war, growing inequality, and proprietary digital technology? The boundaries of such institutions have grown fuzzy. They extend from a region where the audience is pumped for tweets to a future of “neurocurating,” in which paintings surveil their audience via facial recognition and eye tracking to assess their popularity and to scan for suspicious activity.

In Duty Free Art, filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl wonders how we can appreciate, or even make art, in the present age.

What can we do when arms manufacturers sponsor museums, and some of the world’s most valuable artworks are used as currency in a global futures market detached from productive work? Can we distinguish between information, fake news, and the digital white noise that bombards our everyday lives? Exploring subjects as diverse as video games, WikiLeaks files, the proliferation of freeports, and political actions, she exposes the paradoxes within globalization, political economies, visual culture, and the status of art production.”

Publisher Verso, London, 2017
Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 License
ISBN 9781786632432, 1786632438
244 pages

Reviews: J.J. Charlesworth (ArtReview, 2017), Fisun Güner (Elephant, 2017), El Putnam (Visual Resources, 2018), Carol Breen (Media Theory Journal, 2018).
Exh. review: Gabi Scardi (Domus, 2016).

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WorldCat

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Lev Manovich: Instagram and Contemporary Image (2017)

“This in-depth study of Instagram combines methods from art history, media studies, and data science, and draws on computational analysis of 16 million Instagram photos shared in 17 global cities since 2012. The data collection and analysis were performed in Manovich’s Cultural Analytics Lab in the Qualcomm Institute (UCSD Division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology). ”

Self-published September 2017
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License
148 pages

Author

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Third Text, 120: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology (2013)

“This special issue of Third Text investigates the intersection of art criticism, politico-ecological theory, environmental activism and postcolonial globalization. The focus is on practices and discourses of eco-aesthetics that have emerged in recent years in geopolitical areas as diverse as the Arctic, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Europe and Mexico. The numerous contributors address new aesthetic strategies through which current ecological emergencies – including but not limited to the multifaceted crisis of climate change – have found resonance and creative response in artistic practice and more broadly in visual culture.” (from the Introduction)

With contributions by Christoph Brunner, Roberto Nigro, Gerald Raunig, Jessica L Horton, Janet Catherine Berlo, Jimmie Durham, Subhankar Banerjee, Nabil Ahmed, Berin Golonu, Basil Sunday Nnamdi, Obari Gomba, Frank Ugiomoh, Ursula Biemann, Peter Mörtenböck, Helge Mooshammer, Patrick D Flores, Raqs Media Collective, Luke Skrebowski, Emily Apter, Steven Lam, Gabi Ngcobo, Jack Persekian, Nato Thompson, Anne Sophie Witzke, Liberate Tate, TJ Demos, Eduardo Abaroa and Minerva Cuevas.

Guest editor: TJ Demos
Publisher Third Text, London, January 2013
175 pages

Publisher

PDF (10 MB)
Online supplement (contains another 6 articles + introduction)