Search results for ""author tacita dean""

Everyone wants to find their own place in the world. But where is it and what is it? How do we recognize place as being significant and not just merely space? And what is it that makes one place special and another not? These are questions that have taxed philosophers as far back as ancient Greece. But they are also much more than philosophical investigations. In a world where neighbours fight over a stretch of land, or where some groups can feel safe only in certain locations, place is a living reality that can be either the cause for violent conflict or the glue that binds communities together. This exhibition in a book presents some of the most challenging art to address the function of place in the contemporary world. Arranged into themed 'rooms', it reflects a wide variety of artistic attitudes and practices. Some artists find inspiration in the heterogeneity of the crowded city street, while others celebrate the wilds of nature as a counter to urban life. Some present imagined or fantastic worlds of their own invention, or explore the way place is often a creation of the mind. Others investigate the deep marks that myth and history can leave on the land, or consider how place can be used as a form of political control.Territorial divisions demarcating one place from another, often with terrible consequences, are the chosen subjectmatter of many artists; others prefer to look at itinerant wanderers with no claims on the earth, or to focus on anonymous non-places that lack any real identity of their own. All of the artists in this book – among them Thomas Demand, Allan Sekula, Luc Tuymans, Steve McQueen, Roni Horn and Susan Hiller – use art to puzzle out the complicated ways in which place can shape and affect us. All of them help us to understand the world in which we live.

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A collection of essays and other texts by eleven internationally acclaimed writers, critics and artists.Over a decade after his death W.G. Sebald remains a major presence in world literature. He has a devoted readership in many different countries. This lively and accessible collection offers a series of different illuminations on why Sebald’s work continues to fascinate. Follow Ali Smith as she gets loosed in the translation of his work. Discover with Robert Macfarlane the arguments for and against Sebald’s reputation. Find out from Will Self why British readers might find him a "good German". Think with John Coetzee about the recurrent psychological crisis that haunts Sebald’s imagination. These are just a few of the many discoveries, insights, and imaginative responses that this collection offers its readers. This is the book that readers of Sebald, new or old, need to take with them as they journey through his work. It speaks of and to the different experiences involved in reading Sebald, whether responding to the relation between word and image, or the question of what can and cannot be remembered, or the resonant character of voice and voices, or the strange networks and connections that make up Sebald’s texts. And then there are personal memories by Tess Jaray of working with Sebald, Tacita Dean's own version of Sebaldian connectedness and an enigmatic memorial by Richard Long.The book is edited and has an introduction by Jon Cook, a Professor of Literature and Director of the Centre for Creative and Performing Arts at the University of East Anglia, who was for a number of years a friend and colleague of W.G. Sebald.

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