BAK Critical Readers in Contemporary Art

Author(s)
By Maria Hlavajova, Jill Winder, Ross Birrell, Boris Buden, Jordan Crandall, Bregje van Eekelen, Boris Groys, Viktor Misiano, Irit Rogoff, Martha Rosler, Sean Snyder, Hito Steyerl

The second edition of Concerning War, A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art includes a new preface and an extensive index. Concerning War presents new and anthologized texts by artists and writers who analyze the possibilities for critical artistic responses to the contemporary world as a site of global war. In a variety of distinct ways and from different positions, contributing authors reflect on the nature and numerous aspects of our contemporary condition marked by ongoing violence and conflicts across the globe, and provide insights into how the world in this state of war, though predominantly addressed from our Western perspective, could be re-imagined differently through contemporary artistic and intellectual practices.

With contributions by: Ross Birrell (artist and writer, Glasgow), Boris Buden (writer and cultural critic, Berlin), Jordan Crandall (media artist and theorist, San Diego and Los Angeles), Bregje van Eekelen (cultural theorist, Rotterdam), Boris Groys (art historian and philosopher, New York), Viktor Misiano (art critic and curator, Moscow and Ceglie Messapica), Irit Rogoff (theorist and curator, London), Martha Rosler (artist and writer, New York), Sean Snyder (artist, Kiev and Tokyo), and Hito Steyerl (artist and writer, Berlin).

Table of contents

Preface to the Second Edition

Maria Hlavajova and Jill Winder

Introduction

Maria Hlavajova and Jill Winder

The Gift of Terror: Suicide-Bombing as Potlatch

Ross Birrell

Let’s Do nothing: On the Limits of Public Activism

Boris Buden

Unmanned

Jordan Crandall

Words, War and Imagination: On the Political Trajectories of Everyday Vocabulary

Bregje van Eekelen

The Fate of Art in the Age of Terror

Boris Groys

The War in Chechnya Did Not Take Place

Viktor Misiano

Engendering Terror

Irit Rogoff

Deconstructing the Allegories

A Discussion Between Martha Rosler and Maria Hlavajova

Some Byproducts: Thoughts on the Visual Rhetoric of PSYOP

Sean Snyder

The Violence of Images: Documentarism and Documentality

Hito Steyerl

Colophon

Editors: Maria Hlavajova and Jill Winder

Managing Editor: Jill Winder

Contributing Editors: Anke Bangma, Danila Cahen, and Binna Choi

Design: Kummer & Herrman, Utrecht.

Published by: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and post editions, Rotterdam

Language: English

Pages: 256

Reprinted in 2010 (first published 2006)

ISBN: 978-94-6083-027-3

Price: € 23

Unfortunately, this title is out of print and no longer available.