James Christie & Nesrin Degirmencioglu eds, Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development: From International Relations to World Literature, Brill: 2019; Haymarket: 2020, pp.253-88., 2019
Written by Gail Day and Steve Edwards, the essay proposes Bakhtin's 'chrontope' as the aesthetic ... more Written by Gail Day and Steve Edwards, the essay proposes Bakhtin's 'chrontope' as the aesthetic form for uneven and combined development (UCD) and UCD as the necessary concept for understanding contemporary capitalism on a global scale. Exploring recent Marxist ideas of time, modes of production and colonialism, the essay suggests Sekula is a key figure for 'form giving' in relation to these debates.
Industries of Architecture, eds Tilo Amhoff, Nick Beech and Katie Lloyd Thomas (London: Routledge, 2015), 13-24, ISBN 978-1-138-94681 (hbk); ISBN 978-1-138-94682-8 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-315-67036-2 (ebk), 2015
Allan Sekula. Ship of Fools/Dockers’ Museum, ed. Hilde van Gelder (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2015 [English]), pp 57-70, ISBN 978-94-6270-005-5, 2015
ReNew Marxist Art History: Essays for Andrew Hemingway, eds F. Schwartz, B. Haran, W. Carter (London, Art/Books, 2013), pp 478-493, ISBN 978-1-908970-11-4, 2013
The Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri (1935–94) developed a distinctive Marxist app... more The Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri (1935–94) developed a distinctive Marxist approach of critical analysis, which has prompted extensive responses. The reception of his work in the United States in the 1970s and 80s – the intervention of Fredric Jameson, especially – forms an important moment of historiographical mutation, in which the status of Tafuri’s politics holds an intriguing place: it was eviscerated in the very act of its affirmation. At stake is not simply the problems attending the transatlantic migration of a body of architectural theory, but also a question lying at the heart of Tafuri’s analysis: the problems of achieving social reforms, above all, in ‘working-class housing’. The difficulties encountered by projects to improve accommodation – from Weimar Germany and Red Vienna in the 1920s to the programmes of postwar Italy – provide the concrete material for Tafuri’s analysis while remaining a significant blind-spot within most of the commentary. Tafu...
Aureli advances a fresh, spirited and combative account of the idea of ‘autonomy’, connecting Ita... more Aureli advances a fresh, spirited and combative account of the idea of ‘autonomy’, connecting Italian architectural debates from the 1960s with the politics of class-autonomy that was being developed and advanced by workerist theorists such as Raniero Panzieri, Mario Tronti and Toni Negri. Aureli’s account focuses on Aldo Rossi’s architectural ideas (his Tendenza and his book The Architecture of the City) and the project of the No-Stop City proposed by the young avant-garde group Archizoom. The Project of Autonomy is not simply envisaged as an historical exploration of the 1960s; primarily, it is conceived as an intervention in current architectural theory (and cultural politics), drawing on the author’s interest in Tronti’s politics to challenge the contemporary popularity of a broadly post-Negrian ‘autonomism’. This review questions aspects of Aureli’s reading of Rossi and Manfredo Tafuri. Furthermore, although Aureli’s discussion of Red Vienna opens up onto vital questions of str...
Co-written with two art historians, this essay assesses contemporary debate about art, politics a... more Co-written with two art historians, this essay assesses contemporary debate about art, politics and commodity culture. Starting from the 2009 Istanbul Biennial, with its Brechtian curatorial theme, this we consider's the Left's varying responses to art's co-called 'political turn'. Our essay, includes a substantial review of this important event and a substantive engagement with contemporary thinking about art.
The essay ranges a consideration of the local and regional context of the Biennial's function as part of Turkey's bid to join the EU, through to a longer term theoretical perspective on the critical debates over 'art and life', artistic autonomy and heteronomy, and the revival of avant-gardism.
The authors propose that the standard accounts of the intimate connection between the commodity and art are theoretically flawed and have become conservative and politically counterproductive. We suggest that Marxist analysis needs to develop a more complexly-articulated philosophical reflection on the relation between economy, politics and art - and between political and aesthetic praxes - if it is to advance its longstanding contributions to considerations of 'aesthetics and politics'. This will necessarily entail, we suggest, a serious engagement with the critique of political economy.
This essay is an original contribution to the debate on contemporary art, drawing on an intimate knowledge of recent art and art criticism, it involves a reworking of the standard accounts drawing on an understanding of Marxist theory, which is often invoked in these debates, but often misunderstood.
James Christie & Nesrin Degirmencioglu eds, Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development: From International Relations to World Literature, Brill: 2019; Haymarket: 2020, pp.253-88., 2019
Written by Gail Day and Steve Edwards, the essay proposes Bakhtin's 'chrontope' as the aesthetic ... more Written by Gail Day and Steve Edwards, the essay proposes Bakhtin's 'chrontope' as the aesthetic form for uneven and combined development (UCD) and UCD as the necessary concept for understanding contemporary capitalism on a global scale. Exploring recent Marxist ideas of time, modes of production and colonialism, the essay suggests Sekula is a key figure for 'form giving' in relation to these debates.
Industries of Architecture, eds Tilo Amhoff, Nick Beech and Katie Lloyd Thomas (London: Routledge, 2015), 13-24, ISBN 978-1-138-94681 (hbk); ISBN 978-1-138-94682-8 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-315-67036-2 (ebk), 2015
Allan Sekula. Ship of Fools/Dockers’ Museum, ed. Hilde van Gelder (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2015 [English]), pp 57-70, ISBN 978-94-6270-005-5, 2015
ReNew Marxist Art History: Essays for Andrew Hemingway, eds F. Schwartz, B. Haran, W. Carter (London, Art/Books, 2013), pp 478-493, ISBN 978-1-908970-11-4, 2013
The Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri (1935–94) developed a distinctive Marxist app... more The Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri (1935–94) developed a distinctive Marxist approach of critical analysis, which has prompted extensive responses. The reception of his work in the United States in the 1970s and 80s – the intervention of Fredric Jameson, especially – forms an important moment of historiographical mutation, in which the status of Tafuri’s politics holds an intriguing place: it was eviscerated in the very act of its affirmation. At stake is not simply the problems attending the transatlantic migration of a body of architectural theory, but also a question lying at the heart of Tafuri’s analysis: the problems of achieving social reforms, above all, in ‘working-class housing’. The difficulties encountered by projects to improve accommodation – from Weimar Germany and Red Vienna in the 1920s to the programmes of postwar Italy – provide the concrete material for Tafuri’s analysis while remaining a significant blind-spot within most of the commentary. Tafu...
Aureli advances a fresh, spirited and combative account of the idea of ‘autonomy’, connecting Ita... more Aureli advances a fresh, spirited and combative account of the idea of ‘autonomy’, connecting Italian architectural debates from the 1960s with the politics of class-autonomy that was being developed and advanced by workerist theorists such as Raniero Panzieri, Mario Tronti and Toni Negri. Aureli’s account focuses on Aldo Rossi’s architectural ideas (his Tendenza and his book The Architecture of the City) and the project of the No-Stop City proposed by the young avant-garde group Archizoom. The Project of Autonomy is not simply envisaged as an historical exploration of the 1960s; primarily, it is conceived as an intervention in current architectural theory (and cultural politics), drawing on the author’s interest in Tronti’s politics to challenge the contemporary popularity of a broadly post-Negrian ‘autonomism’. This review questions aspects of Aureli’s reading of Rossi and Manfredo Tafuri. Furthermore, although Aureli’s discussion of Red Vienna opens up onto vital questions of str...
Co-written with two art historians, this essay assesses contemporary debate about art, politics a... more Co-written with two art historians, this essay assesses contemporary debate about art, politics and commodity culture. Starting from the 2009 Istanbul Biennial, with its Brechtian curatorial theme, this we consider's the Left's varying responses to art's co-called 'political turn'. Our essay, includes a substantial review of this important event and a substantive engagement with contemporary thinking about art.
The essay ranges a consideration of the local and regional context of the Biennial's function as part of Turkey's bid to join the EU, through to a longer term theoretical perspective on the critical debates over 'art and life', artistic autonomy and heteronomy, and the revival of avant-gardism.
The authors propose that the standard accounts of the intimate connection between the commodity and art are theoretically flawed and have become conservative and politically counterproductive. We suggest that Marxist analysis needs to develop a more complexly-articulated philosophical reflection on the relation between economy, politics and art - and between political and aesthetic praxes - if it is to advance its longstanding contributions to considerations of 'aesthetics and politics'. This will necessarily entail, we suggest, a serious engagement with the critique of political economy.
This essay is an original contribution to the debate on contemporary art, drawing on an intimate knowledge of recent art and art criticism, it involves a reworking of the standard accounts drawing on an understanding of Marxist theory, which is often invoked in these debates, but often misunderstood.
Uploads
The essay ranges a consideration of the local and regional context of the Biennial's function as part of Turkey's bid to join the EU, through to a longer term theoretical perspective on the critical debates over 'art and life', artistic autonomy and heteronomy, and the revival of avant-gardism.
The authors propose that the standard accounts of the intimate connection between the commodity and art are theoretically flawed and have become conservative and politically counterproductive. We suggest that Marxist analysis needs to develop a more complexly-articulated philosophical reflection on the relation between economy, politics and art - and between political and aesthetic praxes - if it is to advance its longstanding contributions to considerations of 'aesthetics and politics'. This will necessarily entail, we suggest, a serious engagement with the critique of political economy.
This essay is an original contribution to the debate on contemporary art, drawing on an intimate knowledge of recent art and art criticism, it involves a reworking of the standard accounts drawing on an understanding of Marxist theory, which is often invoked in these debates, but often misunderstood.
The essay ranges a consideration of the local and regional context of the Biennial's function as part of Turkey's bid to join the EU, through to a longer term theoretical perspective on the critical debates over 'art and life', artistic autonomy and heteronomy, and the revival of avant-gardism.
The authors propose that the standard accounts of the intimate connection between the commodity and art are theoretically flawed and have become conservative and politically counterproductive. We suggest that Marxist analysis needs to develop a more complexly-articulated philosophical reflection on the relation between economy, politics and art - and between political and aesthetic praxes - if it is to advance its longstanding contributions to considerations of 'aesthetics and politics'. This will necessarily entail, we suggest, a serious engagement with the critique of political economy.
This essay is an original contribution to the debate on contemporary art, drawing on an intimate knowledge of recent art and art criticism, it involves a reworking of the standard accounts drawing on an understanding of Marxist theory, which is often invoked in these debates, but often misunderstood.