The “economization of art” began to take shape in the wake of the crisis of capital in 2009. In this book, first delivered as a lecture at Kunsthalle Bern in April 2016, Diedrich Diederichsen follows Marx’s labor theory of value and counters the symbolic economies dominating the art field, as well as economic exceptionalism or calculation, with systems of recording and reading out.
Drawing on fresh readings of Marxist and postmodern thought, renowned German cultural critic Diedrich Diederichsen compares the abstract and climbing values of artworks with the plunging value of music—a traditionally immaterial art—in order to formulate a broad reflection on the current “crisis of value in the arts.”
From November 2017 to September 2019, res·o·nant, a conceptual light and sound installation by Mischa Kuball, pulsed throughout the architecture of the Libeskind building in the Jewish Museum Berlin.
This Is Television addresses the increasingly obsolete medium of television by way of the medium of the book—by extension commenting on media’s continuous changes of form and format. Through an interplay of theory and artistic research material, the book extends Judy Radul’s ongoing investigation of media with an idiosyncratic perspective on television—while still feeding off collective experience.
Tony Conrad, who can be described as an artist, composer, musician, filmmaker, and performer, might be considered the first true “crossover artist.” Two Degrees of Separation accompanies the eponymous exhibition by Tony Conrad at Kunsthalle Wien.
Realism Materialism Art (RMA) introduces a diverse selection of new realist and materialist philosophies and examines their ramifications on the arts. Encompassing neo-materialist theories, object-oriented ontologies, and neo-rationalist philosophies, RMA serves as a primer on “speculative realism,” considering its conceptual innovations as spurs to artistic thinking and practice and beyond.
Today we live in a world that can be described as an “internet of things,” one that embraces digital technologies, and fulfills the dream worlds envisioned by twentieth-century writers, architects, and artists. The internet is an ever-growing storage space of information that we have come to rely on—but what does this thing called the internet really mean? And does it still exist?
This collection of essays and conversations is the quirky and exhilarating outcome of the collaborative endeavor to interrogate the very conditions of the current upsurge of the art/research articulation—the genealogical and political implications of the ways in which research rhetorics and policies are currently incorporated into the fields of contemporary art and art education.
Truth Is Concrete: A Handbook for Artistic Strategies in Real Politics takes the possibility of concrete truth as a working hypothesis and looks for direct action and concrete knowledge: for an art that not only represents and documents, but engages in specific political and social situations—and for an activism that not only acts for the sake of acting but searches for intelligent, creative means of self-empowerment.
The exhibition “The Whole Earth” is an essay composed of cultural-historical materials and artistic positions that critically address the rise of the image of “One Earth” and the ecological paradigm associated with it. The accompanying publication includes image-rich visual essays that explore key themes: “Universalism,” “Whole Systems,” “Boundless Interior,” and “Apocalypse, Babylon, Simulation,” among others.
Conceived while in residency at the library of the Goethe-Institut New York, this issue of Bulletins of The Serving Library used the context of the hosting institution as a thematic starting point. Germany, and often the author’s specific relationship to the German language, is the unifying thread that unites these diverse pieces.
This monograph features in depth essays on the collective’s work as well as an annotated image section, which highlights bankleer’s recent projects and deployments.
Devised by Stuart Bailey, Lars Bang Larsen, Angie Keefer, and David Reinfurt, this bulletin is based on Larsen’s just-completed PhD dissertation at the University of Copenhagen, A History of Irritated Material: Psychedelic Concepts in Neo-Avantgarde Art. The idea was to contrive a popular version of his academic thesis by editing it psychedelically.
This catalogue pays tribute to one of Germany’s most radical, experimental, and progressive voices. With contributions from over thirty internationally renowned curators, artists, critics, theorists, directors, and practitioners.
When the flexibility, certainty, and freedom promised by being part of a critical outside are considered as extensions of recent advances in economic exploitation, does the field of art then become the uncritical, complicit inside of something far more compelling?
Thomas Eggerer’s enigmatic depictions of groups and collectives attempt less to portray the singularity of the individual than to explore the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion, conformity and hierarchy, as well as the potential of individual or collective utopia.
Adorno: The Possibility of the Impossible (Vol. I) comprises theoretical essays which investigate the relevance of Adorno’s critical theory for the present.
