Rosi Braidotti

Maria Hlavajova

Posthuman Glossary

Simon Sheikh

What has become of the so-called West after the Cold War? Why hasn't the West simply become "former," as has its supposed counterpart, the "former East"? In this book, artists, thinkers, and activists explore the repercussions of the political, cultural, and economic events of 1989 on both art and the contemporary. The culmination of an eight-year curatorial research experiment, Former West imagines a world beyond our immediate condition. The writings, visual essays, and conversations in Former West -- more than seventy diverse contributions with global scope -- unfold a tangled cartography far more complex than the simplistic dichotomy of East vs. West. In fact, the Cold War was a contest not between two ideological blocs but between two variants of Western modernity. It is this conceptual "Westcentrism" that a "formering" of the West seeks to undo. The contributions revisit contemporary debates through the lens of a "former West." They rethink conceptions of time and space dominating the legacy of the 1989--1990 revolutions in the former East, and critique historical periodization of the contemporary. The contributors map the political economy and social relations of the contemporary, consider the implications of algorithmic cultures and the posthuman condition, and discuss notions of solidarity -- the difficulty in constructing a new "we" despite migration, the refugee crisis, and the global class recomposition. Can art institute the contemporary it envisions, and live as if it were possible? Contributors include Nancy Adajania, Edit Andr�s, Athena Athanasiou, Zygmunt Bauman, Dave Beech, Brett Bloom, Rosi Braidotti, Boris Buden, Susan Buck-Morss, Campus in Camps, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Chto Delat?/What is to be done?, Jodi Dean, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Angela Dimitrakaki, Dilar Dirik, Marlene Dumas, Keller Easterling, Charles Esche, Okwui Enwezor, Silvia Federici, Mark Fisher, Federica Giardini and Anna Simone, Boris Groys, Gulf Labor Coalition, Stefano Harney, Graham Harwood, Sharon Hayes, Brian Holmes, Tung-Hui Hu, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Sami Khatib, Delaine Le Bas, Boaz Levin and Vera Tollmann, Lucy Lopez, Isabell Lorey, Sven Lütticken, Ewa Majewska, Suhail Malik, Artemy Magun, Teresa Margolles, Achille Mbembe, Laura McLean, Cuauht�moc Medina, Sandro Mezzadra, Walter D. Mignolo, Aernout Mik, Angela Mitropoulos, Rastko Močnik, N�stio Mosquito, Rabih Mrou�, Pedro Neves Marques, Peter Osborne, Matteo Pasquinelli, Andrea Phillips, Nina Power, Vijay Prashad, Gerald Raunig, Irit Rogoff, Naoki Sakai, Rasha Salti, Francesco Salvini, Georg Sch�llhammer, Christoph Schlingensief, Susan Schuppli, Andreas Siekmann, Jonas Staal, Hito Steyerl, Mladen Stilinović, Paulo Tavares, Trịnh Thị Minh H�, Mona Vătămanu, Marina Vishmidt, Marion von Osten, McKenzie Wark, Eyal Weizman

Art and the Contemporary After 1989

Former West

Jeanne van Heeswijk

Rachael Rakes

Combining handbook, dictionary, and anthology, investigations and examples of artistic practices aimed at social change. This volume from BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, combines handbook, dictionary, and anthology to investigate artistic practice aimed at achieving social change. With text and visual essays, definitions, exercises, interviews, and images, the contributors envision a praxis that is committed to experimenting with aesthetics and politics in ways that go beyond the conventions of Western modernity. These are practices that are interdisciplinary, theoretically informed, and politically driven, offering ways of "being together otherwise." Catalyzed by the work of artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, which focuses on radicalizing civic processes, Toward the Not-Yet imagines and enacts alternative ways of conceiving the present and future. Contributors, among them notable artists, scholars, activists, and writers consider ways of participating in civic life, including "dreamscaping" and "radical listening"; the creation of safer spaces for humans and nonhumans; ways of radically shifting laws and policies; and tactics and methods of collective sanctuary. Toward the Not-Yet is part of BAK's series of BASICS readers, debuting a SUPERBASICS variation that is larger, with more visual content. Copublished with BAK, basis voor actuele kunst

Art as Public Practice

Toward the Not-Yet

Charles Esche

The state of the Netherlands as an example of the contemporary western condition. The ideological vacuum created by the collapse of the bipolar world in 1989 was not filled by any new emancipatory political imaginary. Instead, the demands of 'national security', the normalization of violence and the maintenance of high levels of fear and anxiety have become part of daily life in nations of the West. How can art and artists react to these changes and what possibilities can they create to see sings differently? Contributions by artists, philosophers and social scientists in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands, for Example : a Critical Reader

Citizens and Subjects

Jill Winder

Nieuwe en bestaande teksten van kunstenaars en auteurs die de mogelijkheden analyseren om een kritisch-artistieke respons te geven op de hedendaagse wereld in een toestand van mondiale oorlog.

A Critical Reader

Concerning War

If art, science, and the humanities have shared one thing, it was their common engagement with constructions and representations of the human. Under the pressure of new contemporary concerns, however, we are experiencing a “posthuman condition”; the combination of new developments-such as the neoliberal economics of global capitalism, migration, technological advances, environmental destruction on a mass scale, the perpetual war on terror and extensive security systems- with a troublesome reiteration of old, unresolved problems that mean the concept of the human as we had previously known it has undergone dramatic transformations. The Posthuman Glossary is a volume providing an outline of the critical terms of posthumanity in present-day artistic and intellectual work. It builds on the broad thematic topics of Anthropocene/Capitalocene, eco-sophies, digital activism, algorithmic cultures and security and the inhuman. It outlines potential artistic, intellectual, and activist itineraries of working through the complex reality of the 'posthuman condition', and creates an understanding of the altered meanings of art vis-à-vis critical present-day developments. It bridges missing links across disciplines, terminologies, constituencies and critical communities. This original work will unlock the terms of the posthuman for students and researchers alike.

Wietske Maas

Artists, theorists, activists, and scholars propose concrete forms of non-fascist living as the rise of contemporary fascisms threatens the foundations of common life. Propositions for Non-Fascist Living begins from the urgent need to model a world decidedly void of fascisms during a time when the rise of contemporary fascisms threatens the very foundations of a possibility for common life. Borrowing from Michel Foucault's notion of “non-fascist living” as an “art of living counter to all forms of fascism,” including that “in us all… the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us,” the book addresses the practice of living rather than the mere object of life. Artists, theorists, activists, and scholars offer texts and visual essays that engage varied perspectives on practicing life and articulate methods that support multiplicity and difference rather than vaunting power and hierarchy. Architectural theorist Eyal Weizman, for example, describes an “unlikely common” in gathering evidence against false narratives; art historian and critic Sven Lütticken develops a non-fascist proposition drawn from the intersection of art, technology, and law; philosopher Rosi Braidotti explores an ethics of affirmation and the practices of dying. Propositions for Non-Fascist Living is the first in a BASICS series of readers from BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, engaging some of the most urgent problems of our time through theoretically informed and politically driven artistic research and practice. Contributors include Rosi Braidotti, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Jota Mombaça, and Thiago de Paula Souza, Forensic Architecture, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, Patricia Kaersenhout and Lukáš Likavčan, Sven Lütticken, Jumana Manna, Dan McQuillan, Shela Sheikh, Eyal Weizman, Mick Wilson Copublished with BAK, basis voor actuele kunst

Tentative and Urgent

Propositions for Non-Fascist Living

Sven Lütticken

Series and the final part of a three-fold project organized by BAK under same title, in which the popular assumption of the return of religion to the field of artistic practice and its discourses, the public sphere, contemporary politics, and media in the West is interrogated as a constitutive "myth" of our current condition. Through a wide-ranging selection of texts, a group of artists, art historians and theorists, scholars of religion, and sociologists unpack the historical underpinnings of religion's so-called "return", art's long-standing relationship with iconoclasm and connection to religious representation, the manipulation of certain religious imagery in the mass media, and contemporary art's potential to complicate and problematize commonly-held beliefs about the role and potential of the image in today's world.

A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art

The Return of Religion and Other Myths

Binna Choi

On Knowledge Production

Tom Holert

Featuring contributions by artists and theorists such as Kader Attia, Diedrich Diederichsen, Tom Holert, Isabell Lorey and Brian Kuan Wood, Marion von Osten: Once We Were Artistsoffers a critical mapping of the work of Marion von Osten (born 1963). Von Osten and her work sit between several disciplinary boundaries. Based in Berlin and Vienna, Von Osten is an artist as much as a curator, an organizer-facilitator as much as a theorist and a teacher as much as an editor (at e-fluxjournal, among others). This book charts her versatile and thus far under-analyzed work and methodology. The reader anthologizes commissioned essays and three in-depth conversations on various aspects and fields of von Osten’s holistic practice revolving around issues of feminism, economic theory, education and postcolonialism.

Once We Were Artists

Marion Von Osten

Sven Lutticken

Artists and writers consider a tactical desertion from the "culture wars"--a refusal to be distracted, an embrace of the emancipatory understanding of culture. Deserting from the Culture Wars reflects upon and intervenes in our current moment of ever-more polarizing ideological combat, often seen as the return of the "culture wars." How are these culture wars defined and waged? Engaging in a theater of war that has been delineated by the enemy is a shortcut to defeat. Getting out of the reactive mode that produces little but a series of Pavlovian responses, this book proposes a tactical desertion from the culture wars as they are being waged today--a refusal to play the other side's war games, an unwillingness to be distracted.

Maria Hlavajova

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