Visual Arts
Wild Renaissance
A Renaissance is underway. It can be seen as a response to environmental societal and ethical issues so acute that human survival is in question. Artistic philosophical and political it builds on the scientific revolutions of the last decades and positions itself in relation to technoscientific and transhumanist promises. Within this Wild Renaissance man no longer positions himself as master and owner imposing his will on a passive and purposeless nature. He makes ready to listen to a new partner: the world around him. He discovers the potential of its forces which he both harnesses and engages with joining them with his own. A new era is taking shape restoring man to his “wild” dignity and giving his existence meaning joy and ambition. An art is emerging that is redefining the paradigms of creation. Its work is in the vanguard of this societal project.
There is a major tendency in contemporary art and design and perhaps the most innovative one that is putting in place new ways of working and producing works which represent a significant break with the principles that have guided modernity up to the present. We are witnessing the beginnings of a renaissance that can be described as “wild.” Powerfully ambitious it stands as a response to the acute environmental societal and ethical questions raised in today’s world and at their heart the very survival of the human species as we enter the Anthropocene era. It bears witness to massive shifts in consciousness and echoes a call for a change that is becoming increasingly audible. Nature or more precisely a new way of being “wild” – that is to say of thinking and acting on the Earth is the key reference around which the contents of an alternative common destiny are being articulated. The “Wild Renaissance” is supplanting both the modernity that placed man at the center of the world assigning him the vocation of becoming the master and owner of nature and postmodernity which put an end to the great narratives and left only an absolute relativism incapable of supporting new sustainable models.
The word “renaissance” is not used lightly. It stems from a philosophical and ecological analysis of the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy. This upheaval did not come out of nowhere. Today as back then a period of some hundred and fifty yeas paved the way for its emergence. The proto-Wild Renaissance goes from the mid-19th century to the early 21st century. The evolution and convergence of art philosophy and the sciences of the environment can be observed there in relation to key historical and political moments that have repeatedly raised the question of the continuing habitability of the Earth.
The Wild Renaissance is articulated around a renewed vision of humankind and nature. Humankind no longer aspires to impose its will on a passive purposeless nature. Instead it is beginning to listen to a new partner: the world around it. Humanity is discovering the potential of these forces and entering into a relation with them allying them with its own. Humanity is going from from master to collaborator assuming an ecological responsibility that goes hand in hand with a revived dignity and an existence that is all the more exciting for all that. Already-established figures in contemporary art and design together with emerging creators are at the forefront of this new movement. The works and practices analyzed here are shown in a new light with a fresh understanding of their historical grounding conceptual underpinnings and significance for the present.
Previously published in French by Presses Universitaires de France (PUF).
Product Design, Technology, and Social Change
This cultural history critically examines product design and its development from pre-industrial times to the present day considering major milestones in the mass production of goods and services aiming to incorporate a more inclusive worldview than traditional surveys of the topic.
The breadth and versatility of product design through history has been profound. Products have long supported the integration and interpretation of emerging technologies into our lives. These objects include everything from tools accessories furniture and clothing to types of transportation websites and mobile apps. Products provide singular or multiple functions are tangible and intangible and in many instances have impacted the quality of our lives by saving time or money or by increasing feelings of personal satisfaction. At the same time many products have negatively impacted people and the environment. For nearly every product that makes it into the hands of a consumer there is also a designer who created it and someone who laboured to make it.
Examines the relationship between products consumption sustainability politics and social movements. This "pocket history" surveys product design from the agricultural revolution and the birth of cities through industrialisation and a digital design revolution.
artmaking as embodied enquiry
What can a fold be? Virtually anything and everything.
For centuries folds/folding has captured the world’s imagination. Folds readily appear in revivals of the ancient craft of origamithe simplest acts of pedestrian life in art design architecture performing arts linguistics the philosophical turnings of the mind and last but not the least in the many ingenious computations of (bio)engineering and technology. What awaits our understanding is how deeply the fold roots into embodiment into our very impulse to create.
This book is about folding as a vibrant stimulus for trans-disciplinary artistic research – whether for the performative for product realization or simply to enliven body mind and spirit. Conceived as art-made-differently Susan and Glenna share the abundance of their decade-long collaboration in developing their approach to practice research in the fold. In addition to their own insights they invite eight of their collaborators to contribute each a veteran artist. The fold is destined for artmaking – for making any art. Etching into the very fabric of embodiment the fold practice reaches outside the constraints of disciplinary silos into niche areas that embrace the unknown with all its underlying tensions and ambiguities.
Reflecting on a current and unique somatic oriented arts research practice and pedagogy with an intriguing blend of interdisciplinary concern and theory practice and includes a wide variety of practice samples and images.
Critical Digital Art History
Digital Art History has often aligned itself with the practical concerns of digital technology and the responsibilities of art institutions and associated institutional roles such as collection managers information specialists curators and conservators. This emphasis on practicalities and implementation while undeniably important has often meant that there is little room for critical examination of the broader implications of digital technology and computational methodologies in art history.
This anthology seeks to address the dearth of critical reflection by approaching the use of digital technology in art history from a theoretical perspective and critically assessing specific case study examples. This book also considers the political dimensions associated with the large-scale digitization and the application of digital tools within museums and collection management.
A long-standing concers of the field—and also a major focal point of this book—is museum and collecting practices in the digital era. While there is a certain degree of continuity in the field there are some important shifts and changes too. One of the key changes is the widespread uptake of artificial intelligence tools and an increased
attention to both the broader historical and societal aspects of the use of digital repositories and tools.
Decolonizing Islamic Art in Africa
This collection explores the dynamic place of Muslim visual and expressive culture in processes of decolonization across the African continent. Presenting new methodologies for accentuating African agency and expression in the stories we tell about Islamic art it likewise contributes to recent widespread efforts to “decolonize” the art historical canon.
The contributors to this volume explore the dynamic place of Islamic art architecture and creative expression in processes of decolonization across the African continent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Bringing together new work by leading specialists in the fields of African Islamic and modern arts and visual cultures the book directs unprecedented attention to the agency and contributions of African and Muslim artists in articulating modernities in local and international arenas. Interdisciplinary and transregional in scope it enriches the under-told story of Muslim experiences and expression on the African continent home to nearly half a million Muslims or a third of the global Muslim population.
Furthermore it elucidates the role of Islam and its expressive cultures in post-colonial articulations of modern identities and heritage as expressed by a diverse range of actors and communities based in Africa and its diaspora; as such the book counters notions of Islam as a retrograde or static societal phenomenon in Africa or elsewhere. Contributors propose new methodologies for accentuating human agency and experience over superficial disciplinary boundaries in the stories we tell about art-making and visual expression thus contributing to widespread efforts to decolonize scholarship on histories of modern expression.
Watch this Space
This book and its individual essays examine key emerging and evolving practices theories and methodologies that operate in the blurred boundary between spatial design disciplines such as architecture interior and urban design and film and moving image studies more broadly.
The collection is an exploration of the evolving interdisciplinary rhetoric connecting spatial design disciplines like architecture and urban design with film and moving image studies. It is premised on the argument that the understanding of ‘space’ in these areas continues to draw on each other’s fields of reference and that in recent times this has expanded further to the point in which it blurs with multiple other disciplines including media art cultural studies and art practice to name but three. The result of this evolving interdisciplinary understating of ‘space’ in design disciplines and moving image studies is an expanded field of haptic-visual practice and theory that can be investigated as both a material and an image-based construct.
It engages with this evolving set of ideas and underlines how each of its primary discipline areas now increasingly incorporate tools and methodologies from each other’s fields. For example architects routinely engage with cinematic practice as a means of exploring space cultural theorists inspect filmic space as a two-dimensional surrogate of the real media artists incorporate knowledge of spatial design in video installations and film makers create spaces on screen that are informed by architectural theory. This all follows what can be defined as a discursive turn in our view of spatial relationships across disciplines which by definition is complex eclectic occasionally contradictory and at times characterised by surprising confluences.
Conceived as a form of mapping of these confluences and contradictions this book collects varied essays that in their own unique ways explore the diversity of how we today define understand and engage with notions of the body in architectural-urban space. It does so through a triadic structure that progresses from haptic relationships of the body in architectural space through film readings of represented space in mainstream cinema and concludes with ‘experimental spatial’ projects inspired by film and the moving image. This tripartite structure specifically encourages a look across disciplines broadening architectural urbanist media and cinematic concerns through insightful case studies that engage with their subjects by means of novel techniques i.e. employing graphic software for an analysis of pre-digital films deconstructing cinematography in modernist classics or researching urban edgelands via collaging and montage etc.
The Human Shutter
This book provides four key insights beginning with how photographic stillness depth and motion emerged en masse departing from the gradualist narratives familiar in histories of photography and film.
Secondly the book addresses the role of binocular vision in the history of painting and photography. Thirdly the rich history of early stereoviews that constitute the origins of photographic cinema and other instances of temporality is examined. The author explains how binocular rivalry termed ‘the human shutter’ provokes a reexamination of the standard chronology of cinema. The role of the human shutter is demonstrated with a preliminary taxonomy of astonishing images excavated from the photographic archive. Lastly focusing on what happens after light arrives at the retina numerous artists and theorists have employed the stereoscope as a metaphor for critical thinking.
In addition to these new perspectives the book contains significant original research particularly regarding early photographers who have explored motion with binocular vision especially Antoine Claudet and Giorgio Sommer.
Equally important to this discussion are modern and contemporary artists and experimental filmmakers who have focused on stereoscopic spaces including Marcel Duchamp Robert Smithson Lucy Raven Ken Jacobs Alfons Schilling Arakawa and Gins and OpenEndedGroup.
Global Culture after Gombrich
Ernst Gombrich can be considered the most influential art historian of the 20th-century. Until now however the global impact of his work has been under-appreciated. Global Culture after Gombrich: Art Mind World presents essays by historians of art and culture - themselves students of Gombrich or associated with his scholarly home the Warburg Institute - from Asia the USA and Europe.
Subjects range from picture-making’s place in human evolution to the visual marginalia of the Renaissance and from nineteenth-century modernism to the implications of the latest neuroscience for cultural history. Other chapters treat fundamental issues such as the notion of connoisseurship the fate of the idea of ‘culture’ or the cultural specificity of modernism. They range from theoretical broadsides – notably a defence of the ‘intelligence’ of art - to intricate reflections – for example on caricature as a style.
In showing how Gombrich initiated enquiries that have spread in numerous – and global – directions Global Culture after Gombrich: Art Mind World makes a vital contribution to contemporary debates around the languages of art history and showcases the range of approaches and methods by which art history is and has yet to be written.
Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia North Africa
Presents new perspectives on queer visual culture in the Southwest Asia North Africa region from queer artists as well as scholars who work on queer themes. With contributions from both scholars and artists this volume
demonstrates that queer visual culture in the SWANA region is not only extant but is also entering an era of exciting growth in terms of its versatility and consciousness. The volume focuses on artworks produced in the contemporary era while recognizing historical and contextual connections to Islamic art and culture within
localities and regions from the pre-modern and modern eras.
By framing this volume as unambiguously located within queer studies the editors challenge existing literature that merely includes some examples of queer studies or queer representation but does not necessarily use queer studies as a lens through which to engage with visual culture and/or with the SWANA region. Through four interrelated sections - Gender and Normativity Trans* Articulations Intersectional Sexuality and Queer SWANA - this volume probes several previously unexplored academic areas namely the intersections of queer studies with
other fields.
Part of the Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East series.
The Architect's Dream
Sean Pickersgill demonstrates that the goal of creating meaningful architecture can take a variety of critical and philosophical paths. The importance of architecture as an expression of broad complex social drivers is complemented by the equally popular idea that architecture as an intellectual pursuit retains its own autonomy as a self-referential culture. This book uniquely places the emphasis for innovation in architecture within the domain of critical thinking generally and a specific understanding of the semantics of built form.
The book draws on a broad range of subject areas from film to philosophy to anthropology to mathematics and economics to show that the path to meaningful creative practice is always based in an understanding of the principal drivers for change and meaning in society.
It is not a simple recipe book or workshop manual for others to reproduce. It requires the engaged reader to employ their own creative abilities to find what potential lies in each of the propositions and it will encourage the scholastic architect to continue to mine the rich veins of intellectual culture to demonstrate the latent purposiveness inherent in all meaningful architecture.
Dissens and Sensibility
The book is motivated by the author's long-lasting interest in the role of art in society in general and education in particular and is a contribution to arts-based approaches to education. An introduction to pedagogy of dissensus: a pedagogy informed by the dissensual characteristics of art. The book includes both theoretical foundations and examples of how the theory is unfolded in different contexts ranging from educational practice to own arts-based research. This publication is a unique opportunity to launch the relevance of the pedagogy of dissensus in an international context.
The author invites readers to encounter dissensus as an educational strategy through examples from her own research and teaching. Referencing philosophers and theorists such as Rancière Gert Biesta and Dennis Atkinson she demonstrates art’s ability to create necessary disturbance and resistance in art education. Putting art at the centre of education and democracy the author shows what an art education focusing on concepts and issue-based art rather than form colours and composition can contribute as a contrast to the dominating practice in art.
Entangled Histories of Art and Migration
Dedicated to the stories of migrants refugees asylum seekers and exiles this collection asks how these stories are interwoven with art art practices activism reception and (re-)presentation. It explores the complex entanglements of art and aesthetic practices with migration flight and other forms of enforced dislocation and border/border crossings in global contexts - the latter significant phenomena of social transformation in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
These complex entanglements take centre stage when migration shapes forms and aesthetics (and vice versa) when actors employ image politics and visualisation strategies in and about migration at different times and places or when materialities sites and spaces gain importance for decision-making processes. Taking an art and cultural studies perspective the book questions the significance of spatial changes for artistic practice in migration and elaborates on new or different theory-formation.
Interweaves histories of modernism and exile in different urban environments and focuses on historical dislocations in the first half of the twentieth century when artistic and urban movements constituted themselves in global exchange. Although this book takes a historical perspective it is written with an awareness of current flight movements and will make a significant contribution to the theory and methodology of research on exile.
The knowledge of previous historical exile experiences is important for the understanding of contemporary flight movements: after all these are not singular phenomena. For migration movements in the first half of the 20th century and for those of today it is equally possible to speak of urban centres of attraction for refugees: Today Berlin is a European metropolis of exile; in the 1930s and 1940s Paris Prague London New York Istanbul and Shanghai were destinations for refugees.
Entangled Histories of Art and Migration
Dedicated to the stories of migrants refugees asylum seekers and exiles this collection asks how these stories are interwoven with art art practices activism reception and (re-)presentation. It explores the complex entanglements of art and aesthetic practices with migration flight and other forms of enforced dislocation and border/border crossings in global contexts - the latter significant phenomena of social transformation in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
These entanglements take centre stage when migration shapes forms and aesthetics (and vice versa) when actors employ image politics and visualisation strategies in and about migration at different times and places or when materialities sites and spaces gain importance for decision-making processes.
Giving space to these stories of art and migration and its power of pluriverse knowledge production the book takes an art and cultural studies perspective and questions the significance of spatial changes for artistic practice in migration and elaborates on new or different theory formation. Bringing together its case studies and theoretical approaches the argumentation unfolds over the five sections of the book Visibilities | Invisibilities Sites | Spaces Materiality | Materialisation Racism | Resistance and Practices | Performativity.
Digital Embodiment and the Arts
A timely examination of the use of emerging technologies in the arts in recent decades from the first wave of Virtual Reality through to the current use of Mixed Augmented and Extended Realities. It highlights the necessity of understanding technological experiences through the assumption that all experience is embodied. An explosion of digital culture and experience has most certainly given artists and creative practitioners new ways of exploring a hybridisation of creative practices with access to technological tools only previously dreamt of. Further there are a number of threads around digital embodiment and its centrality to the digital experience.
The book is divided into 3: Section 1 explores the whole notion of embodied experience through a study of space and virtuality imagination and technology. Section 2 lays the ground for a more explicit understanding of the role the body has in our engagement with the digital technologies focussing on three distinct bodies: the gravitational body the virtual body and finally the hybrid body. Section 3 is split into three chronological chapters in terms of technological developments that of VR Virtual Worlds and Augmented Mixed and Extended Realities.
While individual aspects and themes covered here can be found in some recent books there is little that places digital embodiment within the arts in the way this book does. A unique synthesis.
Becoming a Visually Reflective Practitioner
Professional practice is increasingly becoming more complex demanding dynamic and diverse. This important and original new book considers how self-study using arts-based methods can enable purposeful reflection toward understanding and envisioning professional practice. Ideally for visual arts practitioners on all levels this book presents a self-study model grounded in compelling research that highlights arts-based methods for examining four areas of professional practice: professional identities work cultures change and transitions and envisioning new pathways.
Chapters address the components of the self-study model artistic methods and materials and strategies for interpreting self-study written and visual outcomes with the aim of goal setting. Each chapter includes visuals references and end-of-chapter prompts to engage readers in critical and visual reflection. Appendices offer resources and guidelines for creating and assessing self-study outcomes.
The fluctuating nature of professional practice necessitates the pursuit of discernment and clarity that can be achieved through an ongoing reflective practice. Self-study is a systematic and flexible methodology for purposeful reflection on professional practice that embraces dialogic interpretive rhizomatic and visual inquiry. Self-study can occur at any level of practice and in the context of work-related professional development formal study or as a self-initiated inquiry. An arts-based self-study model for visual arts practitioners is explored and focuses on four intersectional components shaping professional practice: professional identities work cultures and communities transition and change within professional practice and envisioning new pathways for professional practice.
The self-study model is grounded in contemporary theory practice and compelling research and embraces robust strategies for understanding the complexities of professional practice that can include dual multiple overlapping hybrid and conflicting professional identities tensions within work cultures and unexpected changes within professional practice. Each chapter focuses on a component of the self-study model and an area of professional practice concluding with references and end-of-chapter prompts that are aimed to facilitate critical reflection-on-practice and the creation of written and visual responses.
With visual arts practitioners in mind various arts-based methods for self-study are discussed that highlight visual journaling as a key method for engaging in self-study. Interpretive research methods are discussed to guide readers in understanding the phases and processes for interpreting written and visual self-study outcomes. Processes are outlined to help readers determine key insights themes issues and questions from their self-study outcomes how to use them in formulating new questions and articulating new professional goals. Several levels for interpretation are presented to offer readers options relative to their professional needs and aims.
Throughout the text charts and visuals serve to summarize and visualize key chapter points. Images by visual arts practitioners appear throughout the text and represent a wide range of artistic media methods and approaches appropriate for self-study. The appendices provide additional resources for enhanced understanding of chapter concepts and key terms guidelines and rubrics for writing reflections creating visual responses and using a visual journal in the self-study process.
Primary readership will be visual arts practitioners at all levels. Ideal for university level graduate courses or as a guide for individuals and small groups of practitioners who seek to engage in arts-based self-study as professional development.
The Physical and the Digital City
The Physical and the Digital City is a unique collection of projects where researchers and designers show how the theories of technology underpinning the digital urban environment are applied in practical and spatial terms. The authors are experts in their respective fields who pursue cutting edge solutions for city-making and consider the theoretical premise critically. It is designed to be a self-contained and interdisciplinary reference text to introduce students designers and scholars to the idea of physical/digital and its urban application.
The book will help students and designers to develop a clear understanding of the physical and digital principles underpinning urban assemblages and a solid set of references to start working within this topic with confidence. Of interest to all students and scholars interested in urban studies (geography planning urban design social sciences and humanities) and human-computer interaction (media studies computer science social sciences cognitive sciences anthropology and psychology). The book will clarify the role of digital technologies within the city along with its possible implications for people and communities.
It is oriented to the academic and professional communities interested in architectural urban and digital design from different angles. This includes those interested in computational architecture for example eCAADe Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe ACADIA Association of Computer Aided Design in Architecture CAADRIA Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia SIGraDi Sociedad Iberoamericana de Grafica Digital CAAD Futures Foundation as well as those interested in the human-computer interaction.
Material Media-Making in the Digital Age
There is now no shortage of media for us to consume from streaming services and video-on-demand to social media and everything else besides. This has changed the way media scholars think about the production and reception of media. Missing from these conversations though is the maker: in particular the maker who has the power to produce media in their pocket.
How might one craft a personal media-making practice that is thoughtful and considerate of the tools and materials at one's disposal? This is the core question of this original new book. Exploring a number of media-making tools and processes like drones and vlogging as well as thinking through time editing sound and the stream Binns looks out over the current media landscape in order to understand his own media practice.
The result is a personal journey through media theory history and technology furnished with practical exercises for teachers students professionals and enthusiasts: a unique combination of theory and practice written in a highly personal and personable style that is engaging and refreshing.
This book will enable readers to understand how a personal creative practice might unlock deeper thinking about media and its place in the world.
The primary readership will be among academics researchers and students in the creative arts as well as practitioners of creative arts including sound designers cinematographers and social media content producers.
Designed for classroom use this will be of particular importance for undergraduate students of film production and may also be of interest to students at MA level particularly on the growing number of courses that specifically offer a blend of theory and practice. The highly accessible writing style may also mean that it can be taken up for high school courses on film and production.
It will also be of interest to academics delivering these courses and to researchers and scholars of new media and digital cinema.
Art Education in Canadian Museums
This collection considers how Canadian art educators are engaging with a new range of approaches to museum education and why educators are responding to 21st century challenges in ways that are unique to Canada.
Organized into three sections this collection reconceptualizes museums to consider accessibility differences in
lived experiences and how practices create impactful change.
With the overarching concept of relationality between art museums and interdisciplinary perspectives authors consider methodological philosophical experiential and aesthetic forms of inquiry in regional museum contexts from coast-to-coast-to-coast that bring forward innovative theoretical standpoints with practice-based projects in museums articulating how museums are shifting and why museums are evolving as sites that mediate different and multiple knowledges for the future. Informed by social justice perspectives and as catalysts for public scholarship each chapter is passionate in addressing the mobilization of equity diversity and inclusivity (EDI) in relation to practices in the field.
By weaving the learning potential of interacting with artworks more fully within situated and localized social and cultural communities the authors present a distinct socio-political discourse at the heart of teaching and learning. Rupturing preconceived ideas and sedimentary models they suggest a discourse of living futures is already upon us in museums and in art education.
Art Education in Canadian Museums
This collection considers how Canadian art educators are engaging with a new range of approaches to museum education and why educators are responding to 21st century challenges in ways that are unique to Canada.
Organized into three sections this collection reconceptualizes museums to consider accessibility differences in
lived experiences and how practices create impactful change.
With the overarching concept of relationality between art museums and interdisciplinary perspectives authors consider methodological philosophical experiential and aesthetic forms of inquiry in regional museum contexts from coast-to-coast-to-coast that bring forward innovative theoretical standpoints with practice-based projects in museums articulating how museums are shifting and why museums are evolving as sites that mediate different and multiple knowledges for the future. Informed by social justice perspectives and as catalysts for public scholarship each chapter is passionate in addressing the mobilization of equity diversity and inclusivity (EDI) in relation to practices in the field.
By weaving the learning potential of interacting with artworks more fully within situated and localized social and cultural communities the authors present a distinct socio-political discourse at the heart of teaching and learning. Rupturing preconceived ideas and sedimentary models they suggest a discourse of living futures is already upon us in museums and in art education.
The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine
Using both photographs and written narratives The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine provides a depiction of the lives and struggles faced by Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories on the West Bank in particular the South Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley. It sheds light on issues including house demolitions conflicts between Palestinian shepherds or farmers and Israeli settlers soldiers and police the daily struggles brought about by the occupation's efforts to displace Palestinians from their land and the resilience and bravery required to endure these conditions. This moving book conveys the beauty of the landscape the essence of the language the value of friendships and the richness of a threatened way of life.
Voices of activists both Palestinian and Jewish are brought into focus. The historical context that generated present realities in Palestine is outlined briefly as well as the history of the authors’ partnership. Their perspective mirrors extensive years of involvement in peace and human rights activism in Palestine. It also captures the ongoing dialogue between the two authors who have experienced together the continually renewed astonishment that comes with such experiences and encounters.