Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Vaclav Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises that accompany everything from new cures for diseases to AI
Category Archive: book reviews
The essays collected investigate the relationship between capitalist accumulation and the photographic image, and ask whether photography might allow us to refuse capitalism’s violence—and if so, how?
A sharp overview of artworks that respond to the Anthropocene and its detrimental impact on our world, from scenes of nature decimated by ongoing extinction events and landscapes turned to waste by extraction, to art from marginalised communities most affected by the injustice of climate change
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An analysis of the different contexts in which artists, museums and curators face restrictions today, investigating political censorship in China, Cuba and the Middle East; the suppression of LGBTQ+ artists in ‘illiberal democracies’; the algorithms policing art online; Western museums and ‘cancel culture’; and the narratives around ‘problematic’ monuments
We literally inhale and ingest our own anthropogenic indicators – for example, as the particulate exhalations of burning forests, as isotopes from nuclear testing, as metallic dust from global extractions
It is not about B as an individual, nor is it about a society whose name starts with the first letter of the alphabet. It is neither about Jeff Bezos nor Amazon. B is no one in particular. A is a symptom
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The book looks at art practices that do not conform to a Western concept of art and where the boundaries between art, design, research and activism dissolve
The book takes our planetary state of emergency as an opportunity to imagine constructive change and new ideas. How can we survive in an age of constant environmental crises?
The curious afterlives of an obsolete disk storage through the words of those involved with the medium today
The book maps, critiques, celebrates and historicises cultural activism, from the dual perspective of a commentator (as scholar and writer) and insider (as activist artist)
The book reflects on Lisboa Soa’s ongoing investigation into the spatial, visual but also social and ecological dimensions of sound
Server Farms as Sites of Participatory Power
In the Black Fantastic celebrates the ways that Black artists draw inspiration from African-originated myths, beliefs and knowledge systems, confounding the Western dichotomy between the real and unreal, the scientific and the supernatural
The author looks at a range of psychiatric and neurological disorders that result when body and brain are out of sync, including not only the well-known phantom limb syndrome but also phantom breast and phantom penis syndromes; body integrity identity disorder, which compels a person to disown and then amputate a healthy arm or leg; and such eating disorders as anorexia
“Text is not the only way to make arguments,” writes curator and scholar Hannah Star Rogers. “Materials, too, have the potential to impact conversations in new ways”
It seems that design is locked in a system of exploitation and profit, a cycle that fosters inequality and the depletion of natural resources. CAPS LOCK uses clear language and striking visual examples to show how graphic design and capitalism are inextricably linked
From the politics of proxies to space extractivism and the commodification of the commons, including citizenship by investment and the art market, everything indicates that “offshore governance” has become the norm…
But what are the wider effects of whistleblowing as an act of dissent on politics, society, and the arts? How does it contribute to new courses of action, digital tools, and contents?
There are great ways to adapt to the climate crisis that confronts us, but there are disastrous ways too. In this book, Morgan Phillips takes us from the air-conditioned pavements of Doha and the ‘cool rooms’ of Paris, to the fog catchers of Morocco and the agro-foresters of Nepal
The exhibition in a box features artists, thinkers and researchers whose works unravel the many complex technological, social and ecological systems, both visible and invisible, that surround us
While sparsely occupied ultra-thin “pencil towers” develop in our cities, functioning as speculative wealth storage for the superrich and cavernous “iceberg” homes extend architectural assets many stories below street level, communities around the globe are blighted by zombie and ghost urbanism, marked by unoccupied neighbourhoods and abandoned housing developments
Artists and writers examine the bombardment of information, misinformation, emotion, deception and secrecy in online and offline life in the post-digital age
The authors explore emerging forms of algorithmic governance and AI-augmented apps that collect data about individuals and keep wages and worker representation under control. They also provide case studies of new and exciting form of resistance across the globe
A book that unpacks the notion of the mass image through the lens of affective, representational, political, logistical and material economies
Inspired by medieval bestiaries and observations of our damaged planet, A Bestiary of the Anthropocene is a compilation of hybrid creatures of our time
A practical guide for working with data in more ethical, creative and responsible ways
In previous centuries, Europeans believed that human interventions could tame heavy storms, dry landscapes and unseasonably dark Summers and modify the climate as they wished
Building on a long-shared history in the region, the projects covered in this volume use design and architecture to address social, political and ecological concerns along the shared border between Mexico and the USA
In this manifesto, climate scholar (and saboteur of SUV tyres and coal mines) Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse
The artists who opened their own bank, printed their own money and then bought £1 million worth of predatory debts, which were then blown up in the shadow of London’s financial district
A tarot deck that features inspirational women of science on the minor arcana cards, plus a guidebook with scientist biographies and other information
The book looks at the many dark facets of the corporation, including automation, surveillance, tech work, workers’ struggles, algorithmic challenges, the disruption of local democracy and much more
Examining the potential benefits and risks of using artificial intelligence to advance global sustainability
Each life forms explains a key aspect about life on Earth. From the sponge that seems to be a plant but is really an animal to the almost extinct soft-shelled turtle deemed extremely unique and therefore extremely precious, these examples reveal how life itself is arranged across time and space, and how humanity increasingly dominates that vision
A fun book that targets an audience of art viewers without the usual arty mumbo jumbo. There’s humour throughout the pages and there’s inventiveness in the categories Cotton chose to classify contemporary photography art
A rigorously researched overview of right-wing domestic terrorism. The author analyses its historical roots, characteristics, tactics, rhetoric, and organisation, assessing the current and future trajectory of the use of violence by the far right
The book considers how artists have used cultural practices to rethink concepts of violence and non-violence
A social and political history of industrial pollution, from the toxic wastes of early tanneries to the fossil fuel energy regime of the twentieth century
Of all the radioactive elements discovered at the end of the 19th century, it was radium that became the focus of both public fascination and entrepreneurial zeal
How contemporary photographers of African origin are interrogating ideas of ‘Africanness’