$19.75
(available to order)
Summary:
La guerre futuriste est une mobilisation totale contre les valeurs politiques, morales et culturelles du passé; elle permet à Marinetti de rompre les ponts avec la décadence, d'être de plain-pied dans la réalité qui n'est plus la conséquence du passé mais son contraire. Il repère un ennemi immédiat - les empires centraux "moribonds" - et un objectif facile -(...)
Marinetti et la révolution futuriste
Actions:
Price:
$19.75
(available to order)
Summary:
La guerre futuriste est une mobilisation totale contre les valeurs politiques, morales et culturelles du passé; elle permet à Marinetti de rompre les ponts avec la décadence, d'être de plain-pied dans la réalité qui n'est plus la conséquence du passé mais son contraire. Il repère un ennemi immédiat - les empires centraux "moribonds" - et un objectif facile - l'irrédentisme ; mais surtout il identifie, dans la technique au service du mythe, l'avènement traumatique de la modernité. [...] Marinetti n'est décidément pas facile à cerner. Il est de "droite" ou plutôt d'"extrême droite", lorsqu'il en appelle au droit du plus fort, au reniement de la solidarité de classe, à la loi martiale contre les pacifistes et les traîtres, à la destruction de l'ennemi et pas seulement à sa défaite. Il est de "gauche ", ou plutôt d'"extrême gauche" parce qu'à ses yeux la guerre doit mener à la dissolution de tout ordre préétabli, y compris celui des non-belligérants comme l'Eglise - d'où sa fronde pendant la période fasciste contre les compromis et la corruption du régime. Maurizio Serra, diplomate et historien italien, né à Londres en 1955 ; il dirige actuellement l'Institut diplomatique du ministère des Affaires étrangères italien. Spécialiste d'histoire des idées au XXe siècle, professeur de relations internationales à l'université LUISS de Rome, il est l'auteur de plusieurs ouvrages dont Le Passager du siècle.
Art Theory
$41.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Is it possible for the economy to grow without the environment being destroyed? Will our lifestyles impoverish the planet for our children and grandchildren? Is the world sick? Can it be healed? Less than a lifetime ago, these questions would have made no sense. This was not because our ancestors had no impact on nature—nor because they were unaware of the serious damage(...)
Environment and environmental theory
November 2018
The environment: a history of an idea
Actions:
Price:
$41.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Is it possible for the economy to grow without the environment being destroyed? Will our lifestyles impoverish the planet for our children and grandchildren? Is the world sick? Can it be healed? Less than a lifetime ago, these questions would have made no sense. This was not because our ancestors had no impact on nature—nor because they were unaware of the serious damage they had done. What people lacked was an idea: a way of imagining the web of interconnection and consequence of which the natural world is made. Without this notion, we didn’t have a way to describe the scale and scope of human impact upon nature. This idea was "the environment." Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin trace the emergence of the concept of the environment following World War II, a period characterized by both hope for a new global order and fear of humans’ capacity for almost limitless destruction. It was at this moment that a new idea and a new narrative about the planet-wide impact of people's behavior emerged, closely allied to anxieties for the future. Now we had a vocabulary for talking about how we were changing nature: resource exhaustion and energy, biodiversity, pollution, and—eventually—climate change. With the rise of "the environment," the authors argue, came new expertise, making certain kinds of knowledge crucial to understanding the future of our planet.
Environment and environmental theory
$45.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Contemporary artist Roni Horn first visited Iceland in 1975 at the age of nineteen, and since then, the island’s treeless expanse has had an enduring hold on Horn’s creative work. Through a series of remarkable and poetic reflections, vignettes, episodes, and illustrated essays, ''Island zombie'' distills the artist’s lifelong experience of Iceland’s natural environment.(...)
Island zombie: Iceland writings
Actions:
Price:
$45.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Contemporary artist Roni Horn first visited Iceland in 1975 at the age of nineteen, and since then, the island’s treeless expanse has had an enduring hold on Horn’s creative work. Through a series of remarkable and poetic reflections, vignettes, episodes, and illustrated essays, ''Island zombie'' distills the artist’s lifelong experience of Iceland’s natural environment. Together, these pieces offer an unforgettable exploration of the indefinable and inescapable force of remote, elemental places, and provide a sustained look at how an island and its atmosphere can take possession of the innermost self. ''Island zombie'' is a meditation on being present. It vividly conveys Horn’s experiences, from the deeply profound to the joyful and absurd. Through powerful evocations of the changing weather and other natural phenomena- the violence of the wind, the often aggressive birds, the imposing influence of glaciers, and the ubiquitous presence of water in all its variety- we come to understand the author’s abiding need for Iceland, a place uniquely essential to Horn’s creative and spiritual life. The dramatic surroundings provoke examinations of self-sufficiency and isolation, and these ruminations summon a range of cultural companions, including El Greco, Emily Dickinson, Judy Garland, Wallace Stevens, Edgar Allan Poe, William Morris, and Rachel Carson. While brilliantly portraying nature’s sublime energy, Horn also confronts issues of consumption, destruction, and loss, as the industrial and man-made encroach on Icelandic wilderness.
$35.95
(available to order)
Summary:
The "ruins" of the modern era are the landmarks of recent art’s turn toward site and situation, history and memory. The abiding interest of artists in ruination and decay has led in particular to the concept of the modern ruin - an ambiguous site of artistic and architectural modernism, personal and collective memories, and the cultural afterlife of eras such as those of(...)
Ruins
Actions:
Price:
$35.95
(available to order)
Summary:
The "ruins" of the modern era are the landmarks of recent art’s turn toward site and situation, history and memory. The abiding interest of artists in ruination and decay has led in particular to the concept of the modern ruin - an ambiguous site of artistic and architectural modernism, personal and collective memories, and the cultural afterlife of eras such as those of state communism and colonialism. Contemporary art’s explorations of the ruin can evoke on the one hand diverse experiences of nostalgia and on the other a ceaselessly renewed encounter with catastrophes of the recent past and apprehensions of the future. For every relic of a harmonious era or utopian dream stands another recalling industrial decline, environmental disaster, and the depredations of war. This anthology provides a comprehensive survey of the contemporary ruin in cultural discourse, aesthetics, and artistic practice. It examines the development of ruin aesthetics from the early modern era to the present; the ruin as a privileged emblem of modernity’s decline; the relic as a portal onto the political history of the recent past; the destruction and decline of cities and landscapes, with the emergence of "non-places" and “drosscape”; the symbolism of the entropic and decayed in critical environmentalism; and the confusing temporalities of the ruin in recent art - its involution of timescales and perspectives as it addresses not just the past but the future.
Art Theory
$90.00
(available to order)
Summary:
In 2003, Frank Gohlke and Joel Sternfeld were commissioned to photograph one of the densest concentrations of ethnic diversity in the world, the borough of Queens in New York City. After more than a year of photographing everything from corner bodegas to the borough’s boundaries, Gohlke and Sternfeld had not only captured the complicated dynamic that sustains Queens and(...)
Frank Gohlke & Joel Sternfeld: landscape of longing
Actions:
Price:
$90.00
(available to order)
Summary:
In 2003, Frank Gohlke and Joel Sternfeld were commissioned to photograph one of the densest concentrations of ethnic diversity in the world, the borough of Queens in New York City. After more than a year of photographing everything from corner bodegas to the borough’s boundaries, Gohlke and Sternfeld had not only captured the complicated dynamic that sustains Queens and its myriad communities; they had also evolved a unique theory of landscape photography in which landscape is a visible manifestation of the invisible emotions of its inhabitants. The collection inherits the strength of each photographer’s eye. Gohlke’s Queens consists of streets, houses, fences, gardens, parklands, shorelines, and waste spaces, the territory where human arrangement contends endlessly with the forces that undo it: unruly vegetation, weather, rot, decay, and the “creative destruction” of a voracious commercial culture. Sternfeld focuses on the indigenous shops, restaurants, mosques and temples that make a walk in Queens feel like a walk in Thailand, India or Peru—or all of them at once. Often tucked into homes or converted factories, these places signify a home country, or perhaps a home country that exists more in the mind than in actuality. In conjunction with an essay by the acclaimed writer Suketu Mehta, this book is a powerful instrument for understanding a landscape that seems to defy interpretation. Gohlke and Sternfeld successfully make the dizzying patchwork of Queens accessible and visible.
Photography monographs
$44.50
(available to order)
Summary:
L’originalité même de cet ouvrage précis, documenté, neuf dans le champ de la critique architecturale, tient en sa capacité à démontrer que le lieu – c’est-à-dire l’espace singulier – a été travaillé et transformé par l’architecture à travers l’histoire, les cultures et les styles de toutes les époques, de tous les pays. Le lieu qui n’est jamais neutre permet, et mieux(...)
Architectural Theory
January 1900, Paris
Édifier : l'architecture et le lieu
Actions:
Price:
$44.50
(available to order)
Summary:
L’originalité même de cet ouvrage précis, documenté, neuf dans le champ de la critique architecturale, tient en sa capacité à démontrer que le lieu – c’est-à-dire l’espace singulier – a été travaillé et transformé par l’architecture à travers l’histoire, les cultures et les styles de toutes les époques, de tous les pays. Le lieu qui n’est jamais neutre permet, et mieux encore favorise, promeut un projet d’espace qui trouve dans l’architecture une résolution stable à travers la production et la cristallisation d’une forme lorsque celle-ci s’associe sur la durée à ses environnements naturel et social. « Le lieu est un espace inscrit, qualifié, valorisé. » Au moment où les villes historiques semblent vouées à disparaître dans des agglomérations qui ne sont plus des lieux parce qu’y vivre ensemble devient impossible, ces dernières « expriment » l’absence du projet par lequel elles se sont extraites du vide, se sont développées et se sont étendues sur un vaste territoire par la puissance (symbolique, imaginaire…) issue de la volonté d’édifier. Loin de ressasser un passé désormais révolu, défait par les coups de boutoir d’une modernité aujourd’hui dévastatrice, les auteurs ont pointé la radicalité du phénomène de destruction du projet de la ville en tant que lieu propre de l’édifier. Grâce à une recherche féconde menée depuis plusieurs années, à une grande érudition, et à un savoir puisant ses exemples dans le patrimoine architectural mondial, ils nous invitent à considérer l’édifier comme une dimension essentielle de notre existence.
Architectural Theory
$34.95
(available to order)
Summary:
For as long as humans have gathered in cities, those cities have had their shining—or shadowy—counterparts. Imaginary cities, potential cities, future cities, perfect cities. It is as if the city itself, its inescapable gritty reality and elbow-to-elbow nature, demands we call into being some alternative, yearned-for better place. This book is about those cities. It’s(...)
Imaginary cities: a tour of dream cities, nightmare cities and everywhere in between
Actions:
Price:
$34.95
(available to order)
Summary:
For as long as humans have gathered in cities, those cities have had their shining—or shadowy—counterparts. Imaginary cities, potential cities, future cities, perfect cities. It is as if the city itself, its inescapable gritty reality and elbow-to-elbow nature, demands we call into being some alternative, yearned-for better place. This book is about those cities. It’s neither a history of grand plans nor a literary exploration of the utopian impulse, but rather something different, hybrid, idiosyncratic. It’s a magpie’s book, full of characters and incidents and ideas drawn from cities real and imagined around the globe and throughout history. Thomas More’s allegorical island shares space with Soviet mega-planning; Marco Polo links up with James Joyce’s meticulously imagined Dublin; the medieval land of Cockaigne meets the hopeful future of Star Trek. With Darran Anderson as our guide, we find common themes and recurring dreams, tied to the seemingly ineluctable problems of our actual cities, of poverty and exclusion and waste and destruction. And that’s where Imaginary Cities becomes more than a mere—if ecstatically entertaining—intellectual exercise: for, as Anderson says, “If a city can be imagined into being, it can be re-imagined.” Every architect, philosopher, artist, writer, planner, or citizen who dreams up an imaginary city offers lessons for our real ones; harnessing those flights of hopeful fancy can help us improve the streets where we live.
Urban Theory
Forensic architecture
$49.95
(available to order)
Summary:
In recent years, the group Forensic Architecture began using novel research methods to undertake a series of investigations into human rights abuses. Today, the group provides crucial evidence for international courts and works with a wide range of activist groups, NGOs, Amnesty International, and the UN. Forensic Architecture has not only shed new light on human rights(...)
Forensic architecture
Actions:
Price:
$49.95
(available to order)
Summary:
In recent years, the group Forensic Architecture began using novel research methods to undertake a series of investigations into human rights abuses. Today, the group provides crucial evidence for international courts and works with a wide range of activist groups, NGOs, Amnesty International, and the UN. Forensic Architecture has not only shed new light on human rights violations and state crimes across the globe, but has also created a new form of investigative practice that bears its name. The group uses architecture as an optical device to investigate armed conflicts and environmental destruction, as well as to cross-reference a variety of evidence sources, such as new media, remote sensing, material analysis, witness testimony, and crowd-sourcing. In "Forensic architecture", Eyal Weizman, the group’s founder, provides, for the first time, an in-depth introduction to the history, practice, assumptions, potentials, and double binds of this practice. The book includes an extensive array of images, maps, and detailed documentation that records the intricate work the group has performed. Traversing multiple scales and durations, the case studies in this volume include the analysis of the shrapnel fragments in a room struck by drones in Pakistan, the reconstruction of a contested shooting in the West Bank, the architectural recreation of a secret Syrian detention center from the memory of its survivors, a blow-by-blow account of a day-long battle in Gaza, and an investigation of environmental violence and climate change in the Guatemalan highlands and elsewhere.
Architectural Theory
$21.00
(available to order)
Summary:
For nearly twenty years now, Blair Kamin of the "Chicago Tribune" has explored how architecture captures our imagination and engages our deepest emotions. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and writer of the widely read "Cityscapes" blog, Kamin treats his subjects not only as works of art but also as symbols of the cultural and political forces that inspire(...)
Terror and wonder : architecture in a tumultuous age
Actions:
Price:
$21.00
(available to order)
Summary:
For nearly twenty years now, Blair Kamin of the "Chicago Tribune" has explored how architecture captures our imagination and engages our deepest emotions. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and writer of the widely read "Cityscapes" blog, Kamin treats his subjects not only as works of art but also as symbols of the cultural and political forces that inspire them. Terror and Wonder gathers the best of Kamin's writings from the past decade along with new reflections on an era framed by the destruction of the World Trade Center and the opening of the world's tallest skyscraper. Assessing ordinary commercial structures as well as head-turning designs by some of the world's leading architects, Kamin paints a sweeping but finely textured portrait of a tumultuous age torn between the conflicting mandates of architectural spectacle and sustainability. For Kamin, the story of our built environment over the past ten years is, in tangible ways, the story of the decade itself. Terror and Wonder considers how architecture has been central to the main events and crosscurrents in American life since 2001: the devastating and debilitating consequences of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina; the real estate boom and bust; the use of over-the-top cultural designs as engines of civic renewal; new challenges in saving old buildings; the unlikely rise of energy-saving, green architecture; and growing concern over our nation's crumbling infrastructure.
Architectural Theory
$43.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Why do we have such extraordinarily powerful responses toward the images and pictures we see in everyday life? Why do we behave as if pictures were alive, possessing the power to influence us, to demand things from us, to persuade us, seduce us, or even lead us astray? According to W. J. T. Mitchell, we need to reckon with images not just as inert objects that convey(...)
What do pictures want? : the lives and loves of images
Actions:
Price:
$43.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Why do we have such extraordinarily powerful responses toward the images and pictures we see in everyday life? Why do we behave as if pictures were alive, possessing the power to influence us, to demand things from us, to persuade us, seduce us, or even lead us astray? According to W. J. T. Mitchell, we need to reckon with images not just as inert objects that convey meaning but as animated beings with desires, needs, appetites, demands, and drives of their own. "What Do Pictures Want?" explores this idea and highlights Mitchell's innovative and profoundly influential thinking on picture theory and the lives and loves of images. Ranging across the visual arts, literature, and mass media, Mitchell applies characteristically brilliant and wry analyses to Byzantine icons and cyberpunk films, racial stereotypes and public monuments, ancient idols and modern clones, offensive images and found objects, American photography and aboriginal painting. Opening new vistas in iconology and the emergent field of visual culture, he also considers the importance of Dolly the Sheep - who, as a clone, fulfills the ancient dream of creating a living image - and the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, which, among other things, signifies a new and virulent form of iconoclasm. "What Do Pictures Want?" offers an immensely rich and suggestive account of the interplay between the visible and the readable. A work by one of our leading theorists of visual representation, it will be a touchstone for art historians, literary critics, anthropologists, and philosophers alike.
Architectural Theory