“The collective wisdom of more than a hundred grassroots organizers from five continents. It’s everything you need for a DIY uprising of your own”
Category Archive: book reviews
“How can acts of listening, walking, conversing, cooking, and gardening be related to, or even equated with, the well-established history of painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and other recognized art forms?”
Reilly addresses the urgent need in the contemporary art world for curatorial strategies that provide alternatives to exclusionary models of collecting and display. In so doing, she provides an invaluable source of information for current thinkers and, in a world dominated by visual culture, a vital source of inspiration for today’s ever-expanding new generation of curators
advertising
Paying close attention to practices of trolling and making memes, Megan Condis demonstrates that, despite the supposedly disembodied nature of life online, performances of masculinity are still afforded privileged status in gamer culture. Even worse, these competing discourses are creating rifts within the culture at large, as witnessed by the links between the GamerGate movement and the rise of the alt-right during the last presidential election
The book portrays the routine cruelties of the twenty-first century through a series of detailed non-fictional graphic illustrations. None of these cruelties represent extraordinary violence – they reflect day-to-day implementation of laws and regulations around the globe
Today, in the age of CCTV, drones, medical body scans, and satellite images, photography is increasingly decoupled from human agency and human vision. In Nonhuman Photography, Joanna Zylinska offers a new philosophy of photography, going beyond the human-centric view to consider imaging practices from which the human is absent
social
Through an analysis of textual and media searches as well as extensive research on paid online advertising, Safiya Umoja Noble exposes a culture of racism and sexism in the way discoverability is created online
A resolutely nonanthropocentric take on the materiality of one of the most controversial mediums in art, this approach relentlessly questions past and present ideas of human separation from the animal kingdom. It situates taxidermy as a powerful interface between humans and animals, rooted in a shared ontological and physical vulnerability
In 2005, a group of photographers took a stand alongside the people of the small town of Bil’in, and documented their fight to stop the Israeli government building the infamous West Bank Barrier. Inspired by what they had seen in Bil’in, the group went on to form Activestills, a collective whose work has become vital in documenting the struggle against Israeli occupation and everyday life in extraordinary situations
Based on Lauren-Brooke Eisen’s work as a prosecutor, journalist, and attorney at policy think tanks, Inside Private Prisons blends investigative reportage and quantitative and historical research to analyze privatized corrections in America
Some 100 contributors document around 120 key buildings from this period, including many previously unpublished discoveries that are in acute danger of loss through neglect of intended demolition. Moreover, the book features overviews of brutalism in architecture in twelve regions around the world
Public Space? Lost and Found considers the role of aesthetic practices within the construction, identification, and critique of shared territories, and how artists or architects—the “antennae of the race”—can heighten our awareness of rapidly changing formulations of public space in the age of digital media, vast ecological crises, and civic uprisings
“It is perhaps in the post-human space away from ‘the money’ that the blockchain and smart contracts have the most original things to offer.”
Artists and researchers explore, unpack and critque the blockchain
“A new perspective on a traumatic chapter in German history.”
Arwed Messmer begins with the various photographs made by police photographers at the time—pictures of demonstrators, crime scene images, and mug shots. He poses the question of how this past search for criminological evidence can be employed artistically
Trebor Scholz exposes the uncaring reality of contingent digital work, which is thriving at the expense of employment and worker rights. The book is meant to inspire readers to join the growing number of worker-owned“platform cooperatives,” rethink unions, and build a better future of work
The volume assembles the works of contemporary photographers for the purpose of lending visual evidence to the blatant discrepancy between people’s living conditions, which can be as fascinating as it is shocking
The essays are organized around two key figures: the Ghosts of long-gone creatures and wiped-out plants and the Monsters that both result from and bring about ecological disruption
Creditworthy highlights the leading role that commercial surveillance has played—ahead of state surveillance systems—in monitoring the economic lives of Americans. Lauer charts how credit reporting grew from an industry that relied on personal knowledge of consumers to one that employs sophisticated algorithms to determine a person’s trustworthiness
Sholette lays out clear examples of art’s deep involvement in capitalism: the dizzying prices achieved by artists who pander to the financial elite, the proliferation of museums that contribute to global competition between cities in order to attract capital, and the strange relationship between art and rampant gentrification that restructures the urban landscape
Artist Aleksandra Mir interviews scientists about technological innovations, politics of outer space, the place of the humanities in research and imagined futures that already affect our lives
Allan Wexler’s works can be broadly described as tactile poetry composed by re-framing the ordinary. They sustain a narrative about landscape, nature, and the built environment that highlights the intriguing and surprising characteristics latent in the elements and rituals that pervade daily life
Drawing on fieldwork, philosophy, literature, history, and a range of other perspectives, each of the chapters in this book tells a unique extinction story that explores what extinction is, what it means, why it matters—and to whom
The booklet’s manifesto calls for design (or art) that gets out of the sleek graduation shows and galleries, confronts sociopolitical issues head-on and bites back. As he sums up, “Design can be how to punch Nazis in the face, minus the punching”
The case studies in this volume include the analysis of the shrapnel fragments in a room struck by drones in Pakistan, the reconstruction of a contested shooting in the West Bank, the architectural recreation of a secret Syrian detention center from the memory of its survivors, a blow-by-blow account of a day-long battle in Gaza, and an investigation of environmental violence and climate change in the Guatemalan highlands and elsewhere
This book explores recent and historic artworks in the context of present-day environmental concerns, considering the future consequences of the age of the anthropocene, and humanity’s harsh imprint on our planet
Featuring original essays from prominent media scholars discussing Banksy and Shepard Fairey, foundational texts such as Mark Dery’s culture jamming manifesto, and artwork by and interviews with noteworthy culture jammers including the Guerrilla Girls, The Yes Men, and Reverend Billy, Culture Jamming makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of creative resistance and participatory culture
Using historical and contemporary examples gleaned from political campaigns, PR stunts, advertising or interior design, Nato Thompson efficiently demonstrates how culture can be turned into a set of tools and tactics that allows those in power to quietly manipulate the impressionable, irrational and social creature that we are
At a time when the death of privacy is widely proclaimed, historian David Vincent, describes the evolution of the concept and practice of privacy from the Middle Ages to the present controversy over digital communication and state surveillance provoked by the revelations of Edward Snowden
The book brings together contemporary art and ideas investigating the nuclear Anthropocene, nuclear sites and materiality, along with important questions of radiological inheritance, nuclear modernity and the philosophical concept of radiation as a hyperobject
Socially engaged artists need not be aligned (and may often be opposed) to the public sector and to institutionalized systems. In many countries, structures of democratic governance and public responsibility are shifting, eroding, and being remade in profound ways—driven by radical economic, political, and global forces. According to what terms and through what means can art engage with these changes?
A lively history of all things cryptic, mystic and other-worldly, beginning with the earliest evidence of magical thinking amid the gloom of a Palaeolithic cave, and ending in the bright light of our digital age and its newfound interest in paganism
This book is not about war, nor is it a history of war. Avoiding the shock and awe of wartime images, it explores the contemporary spatial configurations of power camouflaged in the infrastructures, environments, and scales of military operations
Designers have to start thinking about transparency and accessibility in the design of privacy-sensitive products and services. This book offers the designer guidance, in the form of eight design principles, that help with designing products and services
Since 2007, American photographer Jade Doskow has been documenting the remains of World’s Fair sites, once iconic global attractions that have often been repurposed for less noble aspirations or neglected and fallen into decay
Focusing on the alliance between Apple and Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn, Jack Linchuan Qiu examines how corporations and governments everywhere collude to build systems of domination, exploitation, and alienation
HeHe’s projects use clouds as a visual metaphor to aestheticise toxin coated atmospheric emissions. Smog, radioactive clouds, clouds produced by exhaust fumes, cigarettes or industrial emissions are visualised, highlighted, outlined, coloured or put under the spotlight, to alert us— not without humour—on our arrival in the Anthropocene age
Over the coming decades, Artificial Intelligence may alter how we see our place in the universe, as machines pursue goals independent of their creators and outperform us in domains previously believed to be the sole dominion of humans
Anthropologist Hugh Gusterson examines the way drone warfare has created commuter warriors and redefined the space of the battlefield. He looks at the paradoxical mix of closeness and distance involved in remote killing: is it easier than killing someone on the physical battlefield if you have to watch onscreen?
The shopping mall was invented in the United States just less than sixty years ago and quickly spread throughout the world. Due to urban planning’s increasing orientation toward the automobile, the mall became a substitute for lost urbanity. Yet what direction is the development of the shopping mall taking today?
Japanese Tattoos explains the imagery featured in Japanese tattoos so that readers can avoid getting ink they don’t understand or, worse, that they’ll regret. This photo-heavy book will also trace the history of Japanese tattooing, putting the iconography and kanji symbols in their proper context so readers will be better informed as to what they mean and have a deeper understanding of irezumi