BY JUSSI PARIKKAWinchester School of Art, University of Southampton Fracking is a controversial process of forcing the ground open in order to extract gas and oil. The process has had its deserved amount of critique because of the environmental hazards it poses and how such rather desperate means of fossil energy extraction are continuing the … More Fractured Media Materialities: On Geology of Media
BY CARY WOLFEFounding editor, Posthumanities Series at University of Minnesota Press On this occasion of what would have been Jacques Derrida’s 84th birthday, it is worth reflecting once more on the resonance of his work for our own moment—a resonance that depends not only on his own remarkable body of writings, of course, but also … More Reflections on Jacques Derrida, born on this day in 1930.
Paul Carter writes about his book Meeting Place, in which waiting, meeting, non-meeting, and communication have possibilities in unexpected manifestations. BY PAUL CARTERRMIT University in Melbourne, Australia Meeting Place is like its subject: where people meet, there are always many voices and views. So Meeting Place brings together stories, insights, beliefs and experiences from many … More On the challenge of co-existence.
Portrait of Tristan Tzara, 1927. Participatory aestheticsloom large in Tzara’s infamous “Dada Poem” from the “1918 Manifesto.” Part IPart II—BY TODD CRONANEmory University Consider, finally, the case of Dada more generally. Tristan Tzara, for instance, another presumed progenitor of participatory aesthetics, in his 1916 “Note for the Bourgeois” describes “a poem based on new principles.” … More Who cares if you look? Participatory art and the act of interpretation. (Part III of III)
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, Marcel Duchamp.Duchamp famously declared that the artist decided what was art, not the public. BY TODD CRONANEmory University <!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; … More Who cares if you look? On the artist and the spectator. (Part II of III)
Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership. —Lawrence Weiner, “Declaration of Intent” (1968) Shepard Fairey’s OBEY sticker craze captures the core terms of any viewer-driven aesthetic. BY TODD CRONANEmory University “The OBEY sticker attempts to stimulate curiosity … More Who cares if you look? On internal and external relationships with art. (Part I of III)
A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Grant Farred offers a penetrating new analysis of “the event” from a surprising source: Sport. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. BY GRANT FARREDCornell University Sport confounds us. It confounds us for a reason ripe with the following paradox: sport does what it is … More Anything can happen in sport.
Our hot-off-the-press book Prismatic Ecology: Ecotheory beyond Green uses color as a guide to theoretical reflection on innovations that arrive when ecotheory moves beyond the pastoralism of green. This book has a gorgeous cover and a pretty cool story behind that cover. We’ve asked the cover designer, Jeff Clark, to let us in on his … More Cover design process: Prismatic Ecology
It is no easy task to pick particular recommendations among the books you work with. We think all of the books that we have published this year are pretty fantastic. These stood out to us in different ways and for different reasons. We present them here as our first Staff Book Picks of the Year. … More 2013 Staff Book Picks, Part 1
BY LISA GUENTHERAssociate professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University On July 8, more than 30,000 prisoners across California launched the largest hunger strike in state history. Now, three weeks later, more than 600 prisoners continue to refuse meals, in spite of direct acts of retaliation by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Hunger … More Social Death and the Criminalization of Resistance in the California Prison Hunger Strikes
