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Book SynopsisAccompagnying the release of the book Book A/MEGACOLON/For and Against Language, a collaboration with museum De Hallen, Nathaniel Mellors also exhibited an episode of his new film at Onomatopee; Ourhouse. In Ourhouse, Nathaniel Mellors combines sculptural elements with narrative video. In the video series a wealthy European family are unexpectedly confronted with a mysterious manifestation, 'the Object', which suddenly appears in the living room of their country home. In Ourhouse the artist handles subjects such as religion, ideology and power in an absurdist and theatrical manner. In the Onomatopee project space, Mellors shows the first 30-minute episode of Ourhouse. The series will eventually consist of 6 episodes. Book A/MEGACOLON/For and Against Language is an experimental monograph exploring linguistic manipulation, absurdist comedy and other aspects of the work of Nathaniel Mellors, with contributions by artist Mick Peter and critic John C. Welchman. Book A/MEGACOLON/For and Against Language contains a selection of Mellors' original scripts from 2006 onwards, that have since been turned into video and installation works - from the demise of an ageing Polish supercomputer in Brain One Mózg Jeden (2006) to the language games and ideological clashes within the Maddox-Wilson family in Ourhouse (2010-). Art historian John C. Welchman has contributed an experimental Abecedarium, both academic and playful, in which he responds to and elaborates on ideas present in Mellors' scatological intrahuman journey Giantbum (2009). Artist and writer Mick Peter's Wall Eyed Stranger: An Introduction to Mellorfilm and the British Grotesque Explosion' sheds new light on some of the key characters in Mellors' absurdist universe, in a deeply annotated text that increasingly expands and dissolves itself. Editend and Curated by:Xander Karskens Texts:John C. Welchman and Mick PeterGraphic design:Remco van BladelPartners:Museum De Hallen, Galerie Diana Stigter, Lombard-Fried Projects, Monitor, Fund BKVB, Mondriaan Fund and Municipality of Eindhoven.

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Book SynopsisStudies of Old Masters are often implicitly based on modern notions, which do not necessarily tally with ideas contemporary with their art. According to one such tacit assumption a work of art gains its status from the quality of the abstract pictorial composition made up of lines and colours. Whether discussing a medieval altarpiece, or a fresco by Raphael, it is customary to relate its artistic value to the abstract formal language into which the figures or narratives are translated, and not to the power of the visual illusion which is conjured up by the work of art. Referring to the ideas of art historians, critics and philosophers including Hogarth, Caylus, Goethe, Schnaase, Burckhardt, Wölfflin and Shearman, this theoretically revolutionary study questions the historical validity of this view by tracking down its origins back to the eighteenth century and then following its evolution up to the present day. Paying particular attention to the historiography of Mannerism, it scrutinises the influence that this view has had on aesthetic judgments over the past three centuries. A perfect companion for anyone engaged with aesthetics, this book offers a valuable contribution to the discussion surrounding the principles and values in art history.

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisNew perspectives on humor within photography Despite the ubiquitous presence of photographic humor in art and popular media, the phenomenon has as yet received very little scholarly attention. Focusing on staged humor rather than on comic effects of snapshot photography, this volume brings together leading scholars in the field addressing humor performed in front of the camera, often specifically created for the camera, and the performative joke-work done by the medium itself. A first section explores how photography, due to its “shattering” qualities, turns into a privileged medium for eliciting humorous effects and how humor can be discerned within the photographic event. A second section discusses the toolbox of photographic trickery (photomontage, double exposure and cinematic movement) that allows photography to mock itself. The book closes with a section on photographic wit in conceptual art, both in canonized and more locally distinct practices. With artists’ pages from Paulien Oltheten, Lieven Segers and David HelbichThis publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).Contributors: Kevin Atherton (National College of Art and Design, Dublin), Anna Corrigan and Susana S. Martins (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa), Hilde D’haeyere (KASK School of Arts of University College Ghent), Heather Diack (University of Miami), Louis Kaplan (University of Toronto), Ann Kristin Krahn (Braunschweig University of the Arts), Sandra Križić Roban (Institute of Art History, Zagreb), Esther Leslie (Birkbeck University of London), Johan Pas (Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp), Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)Trade ReviewThe book is well designed, with black-and-white illustrations in every chapter. The essays are bookended by colourful (and humorous) ‘artist’s pages’ by Paulien Oltheten, Lieven Segers and David Helbich, demonstrating the editors’ stated commitment to giving the book ‘both a theoretical and practice-based component’(p.22). Stills from Oltheten’s La Défense, The Venturing Gaze, which open the book (Fig.9), exemplify the implicit self-reflexivity of much photographic practice. Oltheten includes subtitles of humorous comments made by the people photographed, making subjects of the camera and the photographer themselves. Bleyen’s and Decan’s book will be useful to scholars and those with an interest in photography and humour theory, as well as individuals interested more generally in the affective turn in art criticism.Seth Graham, The Burlington Magazine | 162 | March 2020En examinant l’humour en photographie, ce volume propose un parcours dans l’histoire du médium et offre l’occasion aux lecteurs de multiples potentialités de découvrir, ou redécouvrir, des corpus souvent négligés. L’intérêt de cette réflexion collective réside finalement plus dans la revalorisation de ces objets photographiques, culturels et artistiques considérés comme anecdotiques que dans une véritable conceptualisation de ce que serait un humour performatif. Valérie Morisson, Focales n° 4 : Photographies mises en espaces, mis à jour le 19/05/2020, URL : https://focales.univ-st-etienne.fr/index.php?id=2792Table of ContentsArtist’s pages by Paulien Oltheten Acknowledgements Introduction Mieke Bleyen & Liesbeth DecanPart IFinding Humor in the Photographic EventPhotography and Laughter’s Shattered Articulation Esther Leslie Falling as Art: On Orchestrated Accidents in Photographic Practice in Poland Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans Adding a Giggle: Lee Friedlander’s Practice of the “Shadow Self-Portrait” Ann Kristin Krahn Performing the Performance Documentation Kevin ArtheronPart IIMaking Fun of Photography through Tricks and MontageGhosts Just for Laughs: Spirit Photography and Debunking Humor Louis Kaplan Comedy Performs Photography: Imaginations of Photography in Silent Film Comedies Hilde D’haeyere Feminism, Laughter, and Photomontage: Comedic Effect and Grete Stern’s Sueños Anna Corrigan & Susana S. MartinsPart IIIPhotographic Wit in Conceptual ArtKeeping a Straight Face: Photography and the Performance of Conceptual Art Heather Diack “No Photographs Allowed”: Conceptual Wit in Some Belgian Photo-based Artists’ Books Johan Pas Laughter Protocol: Elements of Humor in Proto- and Conceptual Photography in Croatia Sandra Križić RobanAbout the Authors Artist’s pages by Lieven Segers Artist’s pages by David Helbich Colophon

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Book SynopsisReframing anthropology: contemporary art, curatorial practice, postcolonial activism, and museumsHow can we rethink anthropology beyond itself? In this book, twenty-one artists, anthropologists, and curators grapple with how anthropology has been formulated, thought, and practised ‘elsewhere’ and ‘otherwise’. They do so by unfolding ethnographic case studies from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland – and through conversations that expand these geographies and genealogies of contemporary exhibition-making. This collection considers where and how anthropology is troubled, mobilised, and rendered meaningful. Across Anthropology charts new ground by analysing the convergences of museums, curatorial practice, and Europe’s reckoning with its colonial legacies. Situated amid resurgent debates on nationalism and identity politics, this book addresses scholars and practitioners in fields spanning the arts, social sciences, humanities, and curatorial studies. Preface by Arjun Appadurai. Afterword by Roger SansiContributors: Arjun Appadurai (New York University), Annette Bhagwati (Museum Rietberg, Zurich), Clémentine Deliss (Berlin), Sarah Demart (Saint-Louis University, Brussels), Natasha Ginwala (Gropius Bau, Berlin), Emmanuel Grimaud (CNRS, Paris), Aliocha Imhoff and Kantuta Quirós (Paris), Erica Lehrer (Concordia University, Montreal), Toma Muteba Luntumbue (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels), Sharon Macdonald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Wayne Modest (Research Center for Material Culture, Leiden), Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin), Margareta von Oswald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Roger Sansi (Barcelona University), Alexander Schellow (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels), Arnd Schneider (University of Oslo), Anna Seiderer (University Paris 8), Nanette Snoep (Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cologne), Nora Sternfeld (Kunsthochschule Kassel), Anne-Christine Taylor (Paris), Jonas Tinius (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)Ebook available in Open Access.This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).Listen to an interview with editors Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius at New Books Network: https://newbooksnetwork.com/across-anthropologyTrade ReviewAn extraordinarily rich and provocative collection of essays on the transformation of museums and exhibitions devoted to non-Western arts and cultures. Punctuated by interviews with path-breaking curators, the volume keeps us focused on contemporary practice—its real possibilities and constraints. The editors’ guiding concept of “trans-anthroplogy” avoids both defensive celebration and rigid critique. It opens our eyes and ears to the relational transactions, alliances, and difficult dialogues that are animating former anthropology museums today. James Clifford, Author of Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the 21st CenturyI seldom came across a similarly well-reflected and convincing volume! It asks future-oriented questions across a coherent range of contributions and conversations. This original collection covers relevant exhibition and debates. It is suitable for MA programmes and PhD programmes in curatorial studies, anthropology, postcolonial studies, visual culture, material culture studies, and art. Thomas Fillitz, University of ViennaBy opening the debate up to a European perspective, with contributions related to the French, Belgium, Dutch and Italian contexts, this anthology offers a well-balanced set of statements, interviews and experiences that allow for different practices to resonate and establish common terrains of concern and enquiry. The editors have proposed a rich selection of points of view that neatly embody one of the key requests for a revision of the colonial past that its narrative be formulated through new forms of pluri-vocality, that "trouble", and thus avoid the smoothing effect of the singular institutional voice.En ouvrant ce débat a une perspective européenne, à travers des contributions liées aux contextes français, belge, néerlandais et italien, cette anthologie offre un ensemble équilibre de déclarations, d'entretiens et d'expériences, permettant a différentes pratiques d'entrer en résonnance et d'établir des terrains communs d'intérêt et d'enquete. Les directeurs de l' ouvrage ont proposé une riche sélection de points de vue qui incarnent bien l'une des demandes clés dans la révision du passé colonial: que le récit du colonialisme soit exprimé à travers de nouvelles formes chorales qui soient « troublantes », évitant ainsi l'effet de lissage des voix institutionnelles singulières.Felicity Bodenstein, Critique d'art 55, https://doi.org/10.4000/critiquedart.68093An assemblage of research articles, reflections, and conversations, Across Anthropology: Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial provides a unique and necessary contribution to recent conversations questioning the meaning, relevance, and legitimacy of anthropology as a discipline [...] Offering ongoing projects of ontological shifts and epistemic critiques, this book demonstrates the potential for decolonizing practices in the museum, while also acknowledging that representational work is not enough. [...] I would recommend this work to scholars, students, and practitioners, especially those dubious of the efficacy of anthropology and museums. In interrogating the validity of anthropology and museums, these contributors have deftly demonstrated the radical potentialities offered by these institutions through epistemological technologies and ethical apparatus, even as their epistemic existence is reconsidered. Sowparnika Balaswaminathan, Museum Anthropology, November 2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/muan.12239Table of ContentsList of imagesAcknowledgements Introduction: Across Anthropology Margareta von Oswald and Jonas TiniusMuseums and the Savage Sublime Arjun AppaduraiTransforming the Ethnographic : Anthropological Articulations in Museum and Heritage Research Sharon Macdonald“Museums are Investments in Critical Discomfort” A conversation with Wayne ModestFrontiers of the (Non)Humanly (Un)Imaginable : Anthropological Estrangement and the Making of Persona at the Musée du Quai Branly Emmanuel Grimaud“On Decolonising Anthropological Museums : Curators Need to Take ‘Indigenous’ Forms of Knowledge More Seriously” A conversation with Anne-Christine TaylorTroubling Colonial Epistemologies in Berlin’s Ethnologisches Museum : Provenance Research and the Humboldt Forum Margareta von Oswald“Against the Mono-Disciplinarity of Ethnographic Museums” A conversation with Clementine DelissResisting Extraction Politics : Afro-Belgian Claims, Women’s Activism, and the Royal Museum for Central Africa Sarah Demart“Finding Means to Cannibalise the Anthropological Museum” A conversation with Toma Muteba LuntumbueAnimating Collapse: Reframing Colonial Film Archives Alexander Schellow and Anna Seiderer“Translating the Silence” A conversation with le peuple qui manqueArt-Anthropology Interventions in the Italian Post-Colony : The Scattered Colonial Body Project Arnd Schneider“Dissonant Agents and Productive Refusals” A conversation with Natasha GinwalaPorous Membranes : Hospitality, Alterity, and Anthropology in a Berlin District Gallery Jonas Tinius“What happens in that space in-between and beyond this relation” A conversation with Bonaventure Soh Bejeng NdikungMaterial Kin : “Communities of Implication” in Post-Colonial, Post-Holocaust Polish Ethnographic Collections Erica Lehrer“Suggestions for a Post-Museum” A conversation with Nanette SnoepRepresentation of Culture(s) : Articulations of the De/Post-Colonial at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin Annette Bhagwati“How Do We Come Together in a World that Isolates Us?” A conversation with Nora SternfeldThe Trans-Anthropological, Anachronism, and the Contemporary Roger SansiList of contributorsVisual constellations across the fields Some lists to inspire the reader

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Book SynopsisUp-to-date account of media art issues in the early 21st centuryEarly 21st century media arts are addressing the anxieties of an age shadowed by ubiquitous surveillance, big data profiling, and globalised translocations of people. Altogether, they tap the overwhelming changes in our lived experience of self, body, and intersubjective relations. Shifting Interfaces addresses current exciting exchanges between art, science, and emerging technologies, highlighting a range of concerns that currently prevail in the field of media arts. This book provides an up-to-date perspective on the field, with a considerable representation of art-based research gaining salience in media art studies. The collection attends to art projects interrogating the destabilisation of identity and the breaching of individual privacy, the rekindled interest in phenomenology and in the neurocognitive workings of empathy, and the routes of interconnectivity beyond the human in the age of the Internet of Things. Offering a diversity of perspectives, ranging from purely theoretical to art-based research, and from aesthetics to social and cultural critique, this volume will be of great value for readers interested in contemporary art, art-science-technology interfaces, visual culture, and cultural studies.Contributors: Hava Aldouby (The Open University of Israel), Grant Bollmer (North Carolina State University / University of Sydney), Andrea Pinotti (University of Milan), Daniel H. Landau (Aalto University / Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya), Wendy Jo Coones (Danube University Krems), Paul Sermon (University of Brighton), Ryszard Kluszczynski (University of Lodz), Derek Curry (Northeastern University, Boston), Jennifer Gradecki (SUNY Buffalo / Northeastern University, Boston), Tsila Hassine (Shenkar College of Engineering and Design / Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne), Ziv Neeman (independent scholar), Manuela Naveau (Ars Electronica, Linz), Aaron Burton (University of Wollongong), Yvonne Volkart (Academy of Art and Design, FHNW Basel), Jens Hauser (IKK & Medical Museion, Copenhagen University), Adam Brown (Michigan State University), Jonas Jørgensen (IT University of Copenhagen), Olga Kisseleva (Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).Trade ReviewAll contributions are academically and artistically on the cutting edge, and, displaying a critical awareness of various aspects of presence, empathy and agency, they provide the reader with a consistent, multifaceted overview.Alessandro Ludovico, Neural, 8 feb 2021Table of ContentsIntroduction: Shift­ing Interfaces Hava AldoubyI Immersion, Empathy, and Presence: Manipulating the Boundaries of Self and BodyFrom Immersion to Empathy: The Legacy of Einfühlung in Virtual Reality and Digital Art Grant BollmerAvatars: Shi­fting Identities in a Genealogical Perspective Andrea PinottiMeeting Yourself in Virtual Reality: A Performative Experiment in Self-Compassion Daniel LandauArt and Presence: Investigating Embodiment in a Virtual Art Gallery Hava AldoubyShared Objective Empathy in Telematic Space Paul SermonElaborating Mediation Through Media Arts Wendy CoonesII Subjects of Surveillance: Reclaiming Human Agency in the Big Data UniverseQualculative Poetics: An Artistic Critique of Rational Judgment Derek Curry and Jennifer GradeckiGoogle, Shmoogle: A Critical Twist on Search Engine Ideology Ziv Neeman and Tsila HassineSculpting Time: The Art of Collective Memory Ryszard W. KluszczynskiThe Logic of Participation in Digital Art and Network Culture Manuela NaveauAesthetic Strategies in the Wasteocene Yvonne VolkartIII Bacteria and Smart Objects: Presences Beyond the HumanRehabilitating Bacteria: An Epistemological Art/Science Interface Jens HauserExceptional Matters Adam W. BrownFrom So­ Sculpture to So­ Robotics: Retracing Entropic Aesthetics of the Life-like Jonas JørgensenNatures Mortes, Live Data: The Art Object in the IoT Era Tsila Hassine, Olga KisselevaUnmanned Imaging of the Anthropocene Aaron BurtonList of ContributorsIndexColor Plates

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Book SynopsisComprehensive overview of a highly influential contemporary artist’s work Victor Burgin counts among the most versatile figures within art and visual culture since the late 1960s. His artwork both connects with and reacts to minimalism, conceptual art, staged photography, appropriation art, video art and, more recently, computer-based imaging. As a scholar his thinking is informed by phenomenology, semiotics, poststructuralism, feminist theory, and psychoanalysis.This monograph provides a comprehensive and unique overview of Victor Burgin’s body of work over the past five decades. Identifying the concept of ‘psychical realism’ as an overarching umbrella term, Alexander Streitberger traces back the artist’s parallel unfolding of practice and theory, while situating this process within various historical contexts and critical debates. Five chapters link insightful case studies to key issues such as conceptual art and situational aesthetics, the relationship between representation and politics, postmodernist concepts of space, and the digital environment of media images. The book is richly illustrated and includes a sequence from the major work Dear Urania (2016) especially designed by the artist for this book.This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction 1. Situational Aesthetics 1.1. Beyond Minimalism: From Object to Perception 1.2. Role-playing: Behavior and Memory 1.3. Photography between Reflection and Recollection 1.4. Serial Art and Systems 1.5. The Text Works and the Perceptual Field 1.6. Linguistic Art and Ideology 2. Toward a Politics of Representation 2.1. The Politicization of Art in Britain 2.2. Guerrilla Rhetoric: The Antanaclastic Works 2.2.1. The Discordance of Ideologies 2.2.2. Semiotic Theory and Artistic Practice 2.2.3. Heroes Don’t Smell Very Nice! 2.3. The Author as Producer 2.3.1. Work Outside and Inside the Gallery 2.3.2. The Tradition of Political Photocollage 2.3.3. The Author as Producer 2.4. Toward a Rhetoric of the Unconscious 2.4.1. The Rhetoric of Art Photography and Advertising 2.4.2. Framing Sexual Difference 2.4.3. Scopophilia and Surveillance 3. Tales from Freud 3.1. Toward a Psychical Realism 3.2. From Socio-history to Psycho-history 3.2.1. A Socio-historical “Psychodrama” 3.2.2. The Shattered Composite 3.2.3. Visual Pleasure and the Photographic Fetish 3.3. The Rebus as a Model of “Critical Seeing” 3.3.1. The Suspended Peripeteian Moment 3.3.2. Voyeurism, Masculinity, and the Uncanny Dance of Ideology 3.4. Between: From Intertext to Masquerades in the Gallery 3.4.1. Hetero-optic Writing 3.4.2. Between Gallery and Cinema 3.4.3. Between the Masks 4. Psychotopologies 4.1. The Discursive Spaces of Postmodernism 4.2. Epistemophilia 4.3. Psychical Space and Postmodernism 4.4. The Paranoiac Space of the City 4.5. Third Space. The Interstitial Location of Culture 4.6. Fiction Films 4.7. The Teletopological Puzzle 5. The Psychomediatic 5.1. The Uncinematic 5.2. The Psychomediatic: Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through 5.3. Photofilmic Psycho-panoramics 5.4. Panorama and Sequence-Image 5.5. Paths through the Virtual Sphere 5.6. Monuments of Melancholia 5.7. The Peripatetic Mode of Spectatorship 5.8. Afterlife Dear Urania Plates Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisImagine a world in which each individual has a fundamental right to be reborn. This idle dream haunts Hilde Van Gelder's associative travelogue that takes Allan Sekula's sequence Deep Six / Passer au bleu (1996/1998) as a touchstone for a dialogue with more recent artworks zooming in on the borderscape near the Channel Tunnel, such as those by Sylvain George and Bruno Serralongue. Combining ethnography, visual materials, political philosophy, cultural geography, and critical analysis, Ground Sea proceeds through an innovative methodological approach. Inspired by the meandering writings of W.G. Sebald, Javier Marias, and Roland Barthes, Van Gelder develops a style both interdisciplinary and personal. Resolutely opting for an aquatic perspective, Ground Sea offers a powerful meditation on the indifference of an increasingly divided European Union with regard to considerable numbers of persons on the move, who find themselves stranded close to Calais. The contested Strait of Dover becomes a microcosm where our present global challenges of migration, climate change, human rights, and neoliberal surveillance technology converge.Trade Review'Ground Sea' makes a significant contribution to these debates as it raises the issue of human rights and the role of photography in the ongoing violation of fundamental freedoms. Olga Smith, Focales, 7 | 2023 URL : http://journals.openedition.org/focales/2514Table of ContentsContents of Volume I Preface: Water-Bound Embarkation: Bone Point Acknowledgments Introduction: Sea-Stricken PART I: Blade 1. Running on Water 2. Ground Sea Plates 3. Ossuary 4. Kairology 5. Reliquiae Notes Deep Six / Passer au bleu (1996/1998) by Allan Sekula Contents of Volume IIPART II: Shuttle 6. The Right to Reappear 7. Naming the Person without a Name 8. Fools & Rights: Leaves for an Illustrated Reader Plates 9. This Precious Jewel 10. Plotting At Anchor: Pearl Diving Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisNew framework for the aesthetic representation of the sea.We are no strangers today to visual representations of human suffering at sea: the refugee crisis that continues to play out in the seascape between Europe and Africa (and not only there) yields an ever-growing archive of humanitarian tragedy. As both a visual backdrop and a lethal medium of unequal mobility, maritime space and landscape play a significant role in mediating the ethical demands of this crisis. Yet, there has been little exploration of the longer history of morality's role in our understanding of aesthetic representations of the sea. The diverse contributions in Moral Seascapes explore the various symbolic forms through which these shifting moral norms and values have been manifested, contributing to debates concerning the place of the sea in visual and literary cultures and the history of morality and emotion, as well as the emergence of modern subjectivity.Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary perspectives such as visual culture, experimental art history, literary studies, history and philosophy, Moral Seascapes develops distinctive new insights into the relationship between the moral cultures of modernity and the image of the sea.

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Book SynopsisThis book brings together two of the most important figures of twentieth-century criticism, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, to consider a topic that was central to their thinking: the place of and reason for art in society and culture. Thijs Lijster takes us through points of agreement and disagreement between the two on such key topics as the relationship between art and historical experience, between avant-garde art and mass culture, and between the intellectual and the public. He also addresses the continuing relevance of Benjamin and Adorno to ongoing debates in contemporary aesthetics, such as the end of art, the historical meaning of art, and the role of the critic.Trade Review"This much-needed book goes beyond the now familiar discussions of Benjamin and Adorno's personal relationship and the "dispute" over Benjamin's artwork essay to examine the complex interweaving of the two men's ideas and texts throughout the whole of each man's oeuvre. Lijster situates his examination within the pressing contemporary issue of the value of art, arguing that art functions as social critique and that art criticism is a necessary fulfillment of art's critical role."- Shierry Weber Nicholsen, author of Exact Imagination, Late Work: On Adorno's Aesthetics "Thijs Lijster has written the most thorough and synoptic comparison of the aesthetic theories of Adorno and Benjamin to date. He has the capacity to take even the most complex materials, and render their essentials in limpid and penetrating prose -- which for writing on these authors is a rare talent. Lijster has the further skill of being a first rate art critic; with the consequence that he has the capacity to test the abstract claims of aesthetic theories against the recalcitrant realities of artistic materials. The result is a penetrating work of aesthetic theory and criticism."-- J.M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research "In this vitally important and timely study, Thijs Lijster argues that the writings of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno comprise a "Critical Model" in which can be found ideas that have fallen out of fashion in contemporary art theory and criticism. Such perspectives emphasize the utopian, emancipatory and critical potential of the artwork, which is to say, its power to break the spell of capital. As such art is to be viewed as the bearer of truth-content retrieved by a form of criticism that 'completes' the work itself."- Samir GandeshaTable of ContentsIntroduction: Critique of Art 1. Autonomy and Critique 1.1 Introduction 1.2 The birth of autonomy 1.3 The artist in the marketplace 1.4 Art versus society 1.5 Conclusion 2. Ends of Art 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Annihilation of semblance: Baroque allegory 2.3 Allegory and commodity 2.4 Proliferation of the aesthetic: technological reproducibility 2.5 Adorno's dialectic of semblance 2.6 Culture industry: the social liquidation of art 2.7 Modernism: self-critique of semblance 2.8 Conclusion Excursus I - The (N)everending Story Hegel and the beginning of the end Danto's post-historical pluralism Vattimo's weak reality Conclusion 3. Experience, History, and Art 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Benjamin's concept of experience 3.3 Experience and history 3.4 Art history and monadology 3.5 Adorno: experience and mimesis 3.6 Natural history 3.7 The tendency of the material and the crystallization of the monad 3.8 Conclusion Excursus II - Base and Superstructure Reconsidered Struggling with a metaphor A farewell to Marx A parallax view on historical materialism Conclusion 4. The Art of Critique 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Benjamin's reading of the early German Romantics 4.3 Revolutionary criticism 4.4 An exemplary piece of criticism: Benjamin's Goethe essay 4.5 Adorno's immanent criticism 4.6 The necessity and impossibility of criticism 4.7 Adorno's Mahler 4.8 Conclusion Excursus III - Where is the Critic? Rise and fall of the critic Why criticism? The critic as intellectual Conclusion Conclusion A distance, however close The 'actuality' of Benjamin and Adorno Critical models Post-Fordism and the new spirit of capitalism Becoming life versus resistance Appendix - Notes on a Camp

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Book SynopsisInternational expositions or "world’s fairs" are the largest and most important stage on which millions routinely gather to directly experience, express, and respond to cultural difference. Rather than looking at Asian representation at the hands of colonizing powers, something already much examined, Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs instead focuses on expressions of an empowered Asian self-representation at world’s fairs in the West after the so-called golden age of the exhibition. New modes of representation became possible as the older "exhibitionary order" of earlier fairs gave way to a dominant "performative order," one increasingly preoccupied with generating experience and affect. Using case studies of national representation at selected fairs over the hundred-year period from 1915-2015, this book considers both the politics of representation as well as what happens within the imaginative worlds of Asian country pavilions, where the performative has become the dominant mode for imprinting directly on human bodies.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Works Cited Note on Asian Names 1. Introduction: Setting the Stage 2. The Master of the Form: Japan at San Francisco's 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition 3. The New China and Chinese-Americanness: China at San Francisco's 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition 4. Performing Japan in the 'World of Tomorrow': Japan at the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair 5. From 'Panda Diplomacy' to Acrobat Diplomacy: China at the Brisbane's Expo '88 6. Fashion, Dance, and Representing the Filipina: The Philippines at the 1964-1965 New York World Fair 7. Performing Modernity under Sukarno's 'Roving Eye': Indonesia at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair 8. Maximizing Affect, Minimizing Impact with Hansik: South Korea at the 2015 Milan International Exposition 9. Hard and Soft Power in the Thai Pavilion: The Spectral Presence of King Bhumibol at the 2015 Milan Exposition 10. Conclusion: The Future of Asian Self-Representation at the International Exposition Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisPerforming Moving Images: Access, Archive and Affects presents institutions, individuals and networks who have ensured experimental films and Expanded Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s are not consigned to oblivion. Through a comparison of recent international case studies from festivals, museums, and gallery spaces, the book analyzes their new contexts, and describes the affective reception of those events. The study asks: what is the relationship between an aesthetic experience and memory at the point where film archives, cinema, and exhibition practices intersect? What can we learn from re-screenings, re-enactments, and found footage works, that are using archival material? How does the affective experience of the images, sounds and music resonate today? Performing Moving Images: Access, Archive and Affects proposes a theoretical framework from the perspective of the performative practice of programming, curating, and reconstructing, bringing in insights from original interviews with cultural agents together with an interdisciplinary academic discourse.Trade Review"Performing Moving Images is the newest book from the acclaimed Framing Film series, published by Eye Filmmuseum and Amsterdam University Press. [...] This book will be hugely valuable to anyone with a keen interest in discovering more about how films emerge from archives to appear before an audience." - Helen de Witt, FIAF Journal of Film Preservation, April 2021Table of ContentsIntroduction: Experimental Cinema, Expanded Cinema, and Artists' Film Chapter 1: Access: Agents, Archives Archive - Whether to Preserve or to Show Programming - Historiography in the Making Curating - Montage of Contexts Case Study: Living Archive Project - Arsenal, Berlin Expanded Cinema - Expanded Consciousness and Event Case Study: Forum Expanded, Berlin Film Festival Case Study: International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen Case Study: Anthony McCall's Line Describing a Cone Archival Impulse - Archive Fever Chapter 2: Affect: Performance, Audience Black Box and White Cube Case Study: Anthology Film Archives, New York Case Study: LUX, Light Industry, Filmforum, Lightcone, LaborBerlin Case Study: Harun Farocki Case Study: Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam Aesthetic Experience Music in Film Studies Sensual Pleasure Case Study: Sonic Acts Festival Case Study: Psychedelia and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) Programming affects Chapter 3: Reconstruction: Memory and Audio-Visual Heritage Historiography - Films that Make History Case Study: The Realm of Possibilities 4-Access: Diamonds, Enter, Fin Documents - Testifying the Past Found Footage - Sampling and Remixing images and music Experimental Music Video Clips Case Study: Deutsches Filminstitut Filmmuseum, Frankfurt Audio-Visual Heritage Expanded Heritage Memory - Joyful Archive of Experiences Experimental films and philosophy Outlook Conclusion Acknowledgements Illustrations General Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAs the cinematic experience becomes subsumed into today's ubiquitous technologies of seeing, contemporary artworks lift the cinematic out of the immateriality of the film screen and separate it into its physical components within the gallery space. How to read these reformulations of the cinematic medium - and their critique of what it is and has been? In Theorizing Cinema Through Contemporary Art: Expanding Cinema, leading film theorists consider artworks that incorporate, restage, and re-present cinema's configuration of the key categories of space, experience, presence/absence, production and consumption, technology, myth, perception, event, and temporality, so interrogating the creation, appraisal, and evolution of film theory as channeled through contemporary art. This book takes film theory as a blueprint for the moving image, and juxtaposes it with artworks that render cinema as a material object. In the process, it unfolds a complex relationship between a theory and a practice that have commonly been seen as virtually incompatible, renewing our understanding of each and, more to the point, their interactions.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Foreword: Courtesy of the Artists, by Sandra Gibson + Luis Recoder Introduction: On Cinema Expanding, by Jill Murphy and Laura Rascaroli Part One: Materialities 1. Cinema as (In)Visible Object: Looking, Making, and Remaking, by Matilde Nardelli 2. Objects in Time: Artefacts in Artists' Moving Image, by Alison Butler 3. Materializing the Body of the Actor: Labour, Memory, and Storage, by Maeve Connolly 4. How to Spell 'Film': Gibson + Recoder's Alphabet of Projection, by Volker Pantenburg Part Two: Immaterialities 5. The Magic of Shadows: Distancing and Exposure in William Kentridge's More Sweetly Play the Dance, by Jill Murphy 6. Douglas Gordon and the Gallery of the Mind, by Sarah Cooper 7. A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance: Tacita Dean's Section Cinema (Homage to Marcel Broodthaers), by Kirstie North Part Three: Temporalities 8. The Photo-Filmic Diorama, by Agnes Petho 9. The Cinematic Dispositif and its Ghost: Sugimoto's Theaters, by Stefano Baschiera 10. Time/Frame: On Cinematic Duration, by Laura Rascaroli Part Four: The Futures of the Image 11. Interactivity without Control: David OReilly's Everything (2017) and the Representation of Totality, by Andrew V. Uroskie 12. Post-Cinematic Unframing, by Lisa Åkervall 13. Absolute Immanence, by D. N. Rodowick Index

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Book SynopsisHow do we experience disaster films in cinema? And where does disaster cinema come from? The two questions are more closely related than one might initially think. For the framework of the cinematic experience of natural disasters has its roots in the mid-eighteenth century when the aesthetic category of the sublime was re-established as the primary mode for appreciating nature's violent forces. In this book, the sublime is understood as a complex and culturally specific meeting point between philosophical thought, artistic creation, social and technical development, and popular imagination. On the one hand, the sublime provides a receptive model to uncover how cinematic disaster depictions affect our senses, bodies and minds. On the other hand, this experiential framework of disaster cinema is only one of the most recent agents within the historical trajectory of sublime disasters, which is traced in this book among a broad range of media: from landscape and history painting to a variety of pictorial devices like Eidophusikon, Panorama, Diorama, and, finally, cinema.Trade Review"Disaster Cinema in Historical Perspective: Mediations of the Sublime is a genuine and original contribution to the fields of art history and cinema studies as well as to discussions on the concept of the sublime in the field of aesthetics. It is well-organized, well-informed, and lucidly written and draws on an impressive body of empirical and theoretical materials. As importantly, it is critical and nuanced in its claims and assertions, leaving ample room for discussion and counter-argument." - Ina Blom, University of Chicago, University of OsloTable of ContentsI. Introduction Theories of the Sublime: Edmund Burke & Immanuel Kant The Archeology and Iconography of the Sublime Analyzing Disaster Movies The Disaster Movie Genre and the Film Selection Works Cited II. Starting Points Dutch Landscapes of the North Transforming the Sublime. From Rhetoric to Experiencing Nature Picturesque Views Lisbon Shock Waves Heroic Geology Commodifying Nature. Earth Economics & Tourism Works Cited III. The Iconography of the Sublime Virtual Windows. Claude Joseph Vernet at the Academy Salon Remarkable Views. Caspar Wolf in the Alps Volcano Montages: Derby, Valenciennes, Wutky, Volaire, Briullov Works Cited IV. Mediating the Sublime Between Art Academy and Entertainment Culture: Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg Apocalypse Here-and-Now. John Martin 'The Viewer Feels as Though His Eyelids Had Been Cut Off'. Visiting the Panorama Panoramic Landscapes Through the Telescope: The Hudson River School Nature's Forces in Motion: The Diorama Works Cited V. Cinema - A Medium of the Sublime? Photographic Images in Motion Is the Sublime a Somatic Experience? Montage Camera Sound and Multimedia Cinema Works Cited VI. Disaster Cinema. A Historical Overview Disaster Films Between Documentary and Special Effects Newsreel Early Epics and Travel Genres Disaster Melodramas Disaster Diversity: the 1950s and 1960s 'Disaster Movies' and Nuclear Wastelands Digitally Painted Disasters Works Cited VII. The Sublime in Disaster Cinema Patterns of Violence, or, The Sublime as Somatic Excess 1. Mise en images 2. Montage 3. Camera Movement 4. Sound Points of Disinterest: Subjectivity Beyond Imagination: Transcendence 1. Chasing Phantoms. The Disaster-Time-Image 2. Last Line of Defense. Ethics 3. 'Hear God Howl' - Religion and Spirituality Modality, or, The Pleasure of the Sublime Border Conflicts. Presentability 'It Is Gonna Send Us Back to the Stone Age!' - The Geological Sublime Neighbor Relations: The Sublime and the Ridiculous What Lies Ahead? Hyperobjects and the Sublime Works Cited VIII. Bibliography IX. Index

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Book SynopsisExhibiting Antonio Canova: Display and the Transformation of Sculptural Theory argues that the display of Canova’s sculptures in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries acted as a catalyst for discourse across a broad range of subjects. By enshrining his marble figures alongside plaster casts of ancient works, bathing them in candlelight, staining and waxing their surfaces, and even setting them in motion on rotating bases, Canova engaged viewers intellectually, physically, and emotionally. These displays inspired discussions on topics as diverse as originality and artistic production, the association between the sculptural surface, flesh, and anatomy, the relationship between painting and sculpture, and the role of public museums. Beholders’ discussions also shaped the legacy of important sculptural theories. They helped usher in their modern definitions and created the lenses through which we experience and interpret works of art, establishing modern attitudes not just towards sculpture, but towards cultural patrimony in general.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction. Canova on Display Chapter One. Imagining Sculptural Practice Chapter Two. Reevaluating Ancients and Moderns Chapter Three. Anatomizing the Female Nude Chapter Four. Challenging the Supremacy of Painting Chapter Five. Defining Modern Sculpture Conclusion. Aftereffects Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisGiles Knox examines how El Greco, Velaìzquez, and Rembrandt, though a disparate group of artists, were connected by a new self-consciousness with respect to artistic tradition. In particular, Knox considers the relationship of these artists to the art of Renaissance Italy, and sets aside nationalist art histories in order to see the period as one of fruitful exchange. Across Europe during the seventeenth century, artists read Italian-inspired writings on art and these texts informed how they contemplated their practice. Knox demonstrates how these three artists engaged dynamically with these writings, incorporating or rejecting the theoretical premises to which they were exposed. Additionally, this study significantly expands our understanding of how paintings can activate the sense of touch. Knox discusses how Velaìzquez and Rembrandt, though in quite different ways, sought to conjure for viewers thoughts about touching that resonated directly with the subject matter they depicted.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction: Polemics of Painting Part One - Origin Stories and the Challenge of Italy Chapter One - El Greco: Italy, Crete, Toledo Chapter Two - From El Greco to Velázquez: Juan Bautista Maíno Part Two - Illusion, Materiality, Touch Chapter Three - Velázquez and Inversion: Making and Illusion Chapter Four - Vulcan, Mars, and Venus: Erotic Touch Chapter Five - Late Rembrandt I: Texture and Skilled Touch Chapter Six - Late Rembrandt II: Feeling with the Eyes Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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