Toward the intersections of art, space and structure, and new media:

1) “Beyond the obsolete models of artist or author as genius and their fetish objects, what collective and collaborative practices are inventing new terrains and flows?”

In Autonomedia’s new book Critical Strategies in Art and Media: Perspectives in New Cultural Practices Ted Byfield, Steve Kurtz, Amanda McDonald Crowley, Claire Pentecost, and Peter Lamborn Wilson with the likes of Franco (Bifo) Berardi, Marco Deseriis, Rene Gabri, Brian Holmes, McKenzie Wark, Felix Stalder, and others gather to explore such questions.

2) “It was John Ruskin who claimed that the ‘measure of a city’s greatness is to be found in the quality of its public spaces.’ Looking around the London landscape – the 200-strong herd of fibreglass elephants currently roaming the streets, Banksy’s signature graffiti, the production line of fourth plinth sculptures – it’s hard to imagine the city even registering on Ruskin’s fastidious scale of “greatness’.”

In, State of the Art/Art of the State: Public Art in the UK Alexandra Coghlan explores the role of public art in a cities image and reputation.

3) “Two recently published books – Louis Moreno and John Alderson’s The Architecture and Urban Culture of Financial Crisis and Sarah Glynn’s Where the Other Half Lives – assess the damaging impact of financialisation on built environments and urban housing. In his double review, Owen Hatherley identifies architecture as a prime casualty of neoliberalism’s de facto Non-Plan.”

*Above Image: photo by Albert Renger Patzsch

We Make Money Not Art has an excellent review of Lucy Orta’s new book about Roma people in Europe.

The Roma are present throughout Europe and to some extent in the Americas.  Historically, like Jews, they have been routinely subjected to ethnic hatred and persecution.  Fiercely independent, they refuse a single homeland, preferring to be dispersed and nomadic.  Their cultural traditions are passed orally in a rich array of dialects and through distinctive music and social rituals.  Their language is based on Sanskrit, so traces their origins to India– it appears likely they were escapees from slavery in Afghanistan in 1001.

Treatment of Roma populations has been improving in countries wishing to join the European Union, which demands a high standard of human rights in its members, especially new ones where Roma populations are large.  Many Roma have assimilated into the cultures of their host countries and come to prominence in various fields

At Culture Unplugged watch Skutka: Book of Records, a film documenting the largest settlement of Roma in Macedonia. Isabel Fonseca’s Bury Me Standing and Jan Yoors’ The Gypsies are good background books, but because books have not been part of Roma heritage, there is relatively little Roma literature in print.  PEN brought out The Roads of the Roma, an anthology or poetry and prose, which contains works by a one of the greatest Roma poets, a woman named Papusza, much of whose writings were unfortunately lost.   The Pariah Syndrome by Ian Hancock is a scholarly study of Gypsy slavery and persecution.  The University of Hertfordshire Press has also been regularly publishing books on Romani Studies.

The Roma’s most notable cultural contribution are musical and several films online delve into their ethnomusicology.  Latcho Drom traces Romani culture from India to Spain.  Crossing the Bridge is contemporary documentary about music in Istanbul at the nexus of Europe and Asia. Another relevant film is Adela Peeva’s, Whose is This Song? (preview only), which explores how the same melody is shared, albeit with different meanings, across diverse cultural communities in Turkey and the Balkans.

From Good Magazine’s excellent Transparency feature.

Since 1998, English writer China Miéville has been producing politically challenging novels using as a foil traditional genres like the Western, science fiction, and fantasy.  His last work, a police procedural called The City & the City, masterfully depicts a city divided, where inhabitants live inches apart but nevertheless “unsee” one another.

“I also think there’s a danger of a collapsing reading, as if to say, ‘this book is about cities that are divided in unusual ways and Belfast stroke Jerusalem stroke Berlin are divided in unusual ways and this is clearly about that’ – and I think that actually, in a lot of these cases, the opposite is true. Having an analogy with Jerusalem is extremely misleading: what’s going on in Jerusalem is nothing to do with unseeing, with internalised taboos and norms, it’s to do with a much more overt and political project. The book was intended as a reflection: what is the everyday logic of borders and of life in a city? Then to exaggerate and extrapolate. The border between two countries is an absurdity that’s true, its narrow specificity, the fact that it might be here rather than two foot to the left, it’s very rarely argued on some kind of putative, eternal basis – but those two feet might be the difference between life and death if you’re standing on the wrong side.”

Listen to an interview as he discusses the The City & the City here.

Miéville’s next book, out in May and called Kraken, follows the theft of a giant squid from London’s Natural History Museum.

Different Sames: New Perspectives in Contemporary Iranian Art is a relevant new book that seeks to explore Iranian culture and the contemporary art movement starting in the late 19th century. It explores both an artistic and socio-political timeline of events in Iran’s history – from the 1960’s at the heyday of the modern art movement, when art was only accessible to the most privileged classes, to the rejection of all modern art and forward thinking artists in 1979 as the Islamic Republic took power. 

Different Sames follows the path of contemporary art in Iran all the way up to present day where we see young artists recording biographies of themselves and their country through artistic means and using art as a drawing board and discussion forum for the creation of the future they aim for. The book also serves, it seems, as something of an analysis of the motivations, desires and culture of the young generation in Iran as well as an A-Z of the works of over 100 contemporary Iranian artists.

Not only is this book taking a unique and relatable approach to Iranian history, it seems to be a great reference tool. I think that understanding the art and art history of a culture gives a truly honest glimpse into the lives and minds of its citizens. For example, when we view art or listen to music of our parents generation, we certainly feel a closeness and deeper understanding of what their lives were like at that time. Art is often the only thing with the ability to successfully breach cultural, language and generational boundaries. In this way, Different Sames could not be more relevant at a time where we need to understand all we can about Iran’s history, present and future. 

For a full book review and more information about the book, visit Wallpaper.

Life, Inc by author and media theorist Doug Rushkoff is having its launch party sponsored by SMITH Magazine tomorrow night in at Sutra Lounge in NYC…and of course there is a Facebook invite.

Even if you can’t attend the party, check out the book, which discusses the corporate control over pretty much everything (hence the title) and also provides some solutions for how we can change this. His point is that we don’t realize that money is not the only form of currency and if we want to overcome corporate control, we’re going to have to branch out and begin thinking of other ways to get what we need, such as what he calls “complementary currency” (or doing things for each other and our communities). The book seeks to celebrate pure human connection, unmediated by a business or brand. This is an important message always, but it seems especially worthwhile given the current economic situation and the amount of companies we see falling to both corruption and financial difficulties.

Nina Berman’s new photographic book, Homeland, chronicles America’s creeping progress toward a security state. The award winning documentary photographer started making Homeland back in 2001, after September 11th, when she noticed disturbing changes in the US government’s reaction to national security threats. Berman remembers being in New York City three days after the attacks and seeing armed soldiers patrol the streets and wondering who they intended to shoot.