Download or read book Museum Practices and the Posthumanities written by Fiona R. Cameron and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-24 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critiques modern museologies and curatorial practices that have been complicit in emerging existential crises. It confidently presents novel, more-than-human curatorial visions, methods, frameworks, policies, and museologies radically refiguring the epistemological foundations of curatorial, museological thinking, and practice for a habitable planet. Modern curatorial and museological practices are dominated by modern humanism in which capital growth, social, technological advancement, hubris, extraction, speciest logics, and colonial domination predominate, often without reflection. While history, science, and technology museums and their engagement with non-human worlds have always been ecological as an empirical reality, the human-centred frameworks and forms of human agency that institutions deploy tend to be non-cognizant of this reality. Museum Practices and the Posthumanities: Curating for Planetary Habitability reveals how these practices are ill-equipped to deal with the contemporary world of rapid digital transformations, post-Covid living, climate change, and its impacts among other societal changes, and it shows how museums might best meet these challenges by thinking with and in more-than-human worlds. This book is aimed at museological scholars and museum professionals, and it will provide them with the inspiration to conduct research on and curate from a different ecological reference point to promote a world good enough for all things to thrive in radical co-existence.
Download or read book The Posthuman Pandemic written by Saul Newman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the COVID-19 crisis forcing us to reflect in a dramatic way on the limits of the human and the implications of the Anthropocene Age, this timely volume addresses these concerns through an exploration of post-humanism as represented in philosophy, politics and aesthetics. Global pandemics bring into sharp focus the bankruptcy of the neoliberal economic paradigm, the future of the arts sector in society, and our dependence upon political forces outside our control. In response to the recent state of emergency, The Posthuman Pandemic highlights the urgent need to rethink our anthropocentrism and develop new political models, aesthetic practices and ways of living. Central to these discussions is the idea of post-humanism, a philosophy that can help us grapple with the crisis, as it takes seriously the unstable ecosystems on which we depend and the precarious nature of our long-cherished notions of agency and sovereignty. Bringing together international philosophers, political theorists and media and art theorists, all of whom engage with the posthuman, this volume explores a range of vital subjects, from the inequality revealed by COVID-19 survival rates to museums' role in spreading human-centric understandings of a world struck by human fragility. Facing up to the realities that the coronavirus outbreak has uncovered, The Posthuman Pandemic combines both breadth and depth of analysis to take on the posthuman challenges confronting us today.
Download or read book The Future of Digital Data Heritage and Curation written by Fiona R. Cameron and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation critiques digital cultural heritage concepts and their application to data, developing new theories, curatorial practices and a more-than-human museology for a contemporary and future world. Presenting a diverse range of case examples from around the globe, Cameron offers a critical and philosophical reflection on the ways in which digital cultural heritage is currently framed as societal data worth passing on to future generations in two distinct forms: digitally born and digitizations. Demonstrating that most perceptions of digital cultural heritage are distinctly western in nature, the book also examines the complicity of such heritage in climate change, and environmental destruction and injustice. Going further still, the book theorizes the future of digital data, heritage, curation and the notion of the human in the context of the profusion of new types of societal data and production processes driven by the intensification of data economies and through the emergence of new technologies. In so doing, the book makes a case for the development of new types of heritage that comprise AI, automated systems, biological entities, infrastructures, minerals and chemicals – all of which have their own forms of agency, intelligence and cognition. The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation is essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of museums, archives, libraries, galleries, archaeology, cultural heritage management, information management, curatorial studies and digital humanities.
Download or read book The Ethics of Collecting Trauma written by Alexandra Bounia and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-31 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ethics of Collecting Trauma offers an interdisciplinary dialogue on the ethics of contemporary museums that are involved in collecting moments of collective trauma. Including a range of international contributions, the volume explores the ethics of collecting material that documents contemporary traumatic events. The case studies focus on four categories of such events: forced migration; terrorism attacks; major natural disasters; and cultural traumas, such as the ongoing legacy of colonization. Contributors consider whether cultural institutions have a right to collect materials about these events and what kind of materials they should focus on, if so; who is being memorialized, who should hold the power to decide what is collected, and what the critical timeline for such initiatives is. The volume also considers what the larger purpose of such collecting is and how to deal with past collecting practices, arguing that museums need to consider, in a careful and deliberate way, their ethical responsibilities as cultural institutions. The Ethics of Collecting Trauma will be of interest to academics and students working in the areas of museum and heritage studies, cultural studies, trauma studies, memory studies, and migration studies. The book will also appeal to museum professionals working around the globe.
Download or read book The Hydrocene written by Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-05-09 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges conventional notions of the Anthropocene and champions the Hydrocene: the Age of Water. It presents the Hydrocene as a disruptive, conceptual epoch and curatorial theory, emphasising water's pivotal role in the climate crisis and contemporary art. The Hydrocene is a wet ontological shift in eco-aesthetics which redefines our approach to water, transcending anthropocentric, neo-colonial and environmentally destructive ways of relating to water. As the most fundamental of elements, water has become increasingly politicised, threatened and challenged by the climate crisis. In response, The Hydrocene articulates and embodies the distinctive ways contemporary artists relate and engage with water, offering valuable lessons towards climate action. Through five compelling case studies across swamp, river, ocean, fog and ice, this book binds feminist environmental humanities theories with the practices of eco-visionary artists. Focusing on Nordic and Oceanic water-based artworks, it demonstrates how art can disrupt established human–water dynamics. By engaging hydrofeminist, care-based and planetary thinking, The Hydrocene learns from the knowledge and agency of water itself within the tide of art going into the blue. The Hydrocene urgently highlights the transformative power of eco-visionary artists in reshaping human–water relations. At the confluence of contemporary art, curatorial theory, climate concerns and environmental humanities, this book is essential reading for researchers, curators, artists, students and those seeking to reconsider their connection with water and advocate for climate justice amid the ongoing natural-cultural water crisis.
Download or read book Gender Trouble and Current Archaeological Debates written by Uroš Matić and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book What is Posthumanism written by Cary Wolfe and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to think beyond humanism? Is it possible to craft a mode of philosophy, ethics, and interpretation that rejects the classic humanist divisions of self and other, mind and body, society and nature, human and animal, organic and technological? Can a new kind of humanities-posthumanities-respond to the redefinition of humanity's place in the world by both the technological and the biological or "green" continuum in which the "human" is but one life form among many? Exploring how both critical thought along with cultural practice have reacted to this radical repositioning, Cary Wolfe-one of the founding figures in the field of animal studies and posthumanist theory-ranges across bioethics, cognitive science, animal ethics, gender, and disability to develop a theoretical and philosophical approach responsive to our changing understanding of ourselves and our world. Then, in performing posthumanist readings of such diverse works as Temple Grandin's writings, Wallace Stevens's poetry, Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, the architecture of Diller+Scofidio, and David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, he shows how this philosophical sensibility can transform art and culture. For Wolfe, a vibrant, rigorous posthumanism is vital for addressing questions of ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems and their inclusions and exclusions, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity. In What Is Posthumanism? he carefully distinguishes posthumanism from transhumanism (the biotechnological enhancement of human beings) and narrow definitions of the posthuman as the hoped-for transcendence of materiality. In doing so, Wolfe reveals that it is humanism, not the human in all its embodied and prosthetic complexity, that is left behind in posthumanist thought.
Download or read book A Feminist Companion to the Posthumanities written by Cecilia Åsberg and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-17 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This companion is a cutting-edge primer to critical forms of the posthumanities and the feminist posthumanities, aimed at students and researchers who want to catch up with the recent theoretical developments in various fields in the humanities, such as new media studies, gender studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies, human animal studies, postcolonial critique, philosophy and environmental humanities. It contains a collection of nineteen new and original short chapters introducing influential concepts, ideas and approaches that have shaped and developed new materialism, inhuman theory, critical posthumanism, feminist materialism, and posthuman philosophy. A resource for students and teachers, this comprehensive volume brings together established international scholars and emerging theorists, for timely and astute definitions of a moving target – posthuman humanities and feminist posthumanities.
Download or read book Posthuman Glossary written by Rosi Braidotti and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If art, science, and the humanities have shared one thing, it was their common engagement with constructions and representations of the human. Under the pressure of new contemporary concerns, however, we are experiencing a “posthuman condition”; the combination of new developments-such as the neoliberal economics of global capitalism, migration, technological advances, environmental destruction on a mass scale, the perpetual war on terror and extensive security systems- with a troublesome reiteration of old, unresolved problems that mean the concept of the human as we had previously known it has undergone dramatic transformations. The Posthuman Glossary is a volume providing an outline of the critical terms of posthumanity in present-day artistic and intellectual work. It builds on the broad thematic topics of Anthropocene/Capitalocene, eco-sophies, digital activism, algorithmic cultures and security and the inhuman. It outlines potential artistic, intellectual, and activist itineraries of working through the complex reality of the 'posthuman condition', and creates an understanding of the altered meanings of art vis-à-vis critical present-day developments. It bridges missing links across disciplines, terminologies, constituencies and critical communities. This original work will unlock the terms of the posthuman for students and researchers alike.
Download or read book Climate Change and Museum Futures written by Fiona Cameron and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is a complex and dynamic environmental, cultural and political phenomenon that is reshaping our relationship to nature. Climate change is a global force, with global impacts. Viable solutions on what to do must involve dialogues and decision-making with many agencies, stakeholder groups and communities crossing all sectors and scales. Current policy approaches are inadequate and finding a consensus on how to reduce levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through international protocols has proven difficult. Gaps between science and society limit government and industry capacity to engage with communities to broker innovative solutions to climate change. Drawing on leading-edge research and creative programming initiatives, this collection details the important roles and agencies that cultural institutions (in particular, natural history and science museums and science centres) can play within these gaps as resources, catalysts and change agents in climate change debates and decision-making processes; as unique public and trans-national spaces where diverse stakeholders, government and communities can meet; where knowledge can be mediated, competing discourses and agendas tabled and debated; and where both individual and collective action might be activated.
Download or read book Subject to Display written by Jennifer A. Gonzalez and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-03-04 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the visual culture of “race” through the work of five contemporary artists who came to prominence during the 1990s. Over the past two decades, artists James Luna, Fred Wilson, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Pepón Osorio, and Renée Green have had a profound impact on the meaning and practice of installation art in the United States. In Subject to Display, Jennifer González offers the first sustained analysis of their contribution, linking the history and legacy of race discourse to innovations in contemporary art. Race, writes González, is a social discourse that has a visual history. The collection and display of bodies, images, and artifacts in museums and elsewhere is a primary means by which a nation tells the story of its past and locates the cultures of its citizens in the present. All five of the American installation artists González considers have explored the practice of putting human subjects and their cultures on display by staging elaborate dioramas or site-specific interventions in galleries and museums; in doing so, they have created powerful social commentary of the politics of space and the power of display in settings that mimic the very spaces they critique. These artists' installations have not only contributed to the transformation of contemporary art and museum culture, but also linked Latino, African American, and Native American subjects to the broader spectrum of historical colonialism, race dominance, and visual culture. From Luna's museum installation of his own body and belongings as “artifacts” and Wilson's provocative juxtapositions of museum objects to Mesa-Bains's allegorical home altars, Osorio's condensed spaces (bedrooms, living rooms; barbershops, prison cells) and Green's genealogies of cultural contact, the theoretical and critical endeavors of these artists demonstrate how race discourse is grounded in a visual technology of display.
Download or read book Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism written by Stefan Herbrechter and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-28 with total page 1233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism is a major reference work on the paradigm emerging from the challenges to humanism, humanity, and the human posed by the erosion of the traditional demarcations between the human and nonhuman. This handbook surveys and speculates on the ways in which the posthumanist paradigm emerged, transformed, and might further develop across the humanities. With its focus on the posthuman as a figure, on posthumanism as a social discourse, and on posthumanisation as an on-going historical and ontological process, the volume highlights the relationship between the humanities and sciences. The essays engage with posthumanism in connection with subfields like the environmental humanities, health humanities, animal studies, and disability studies. The book also traces the historical representations and understanding of posthumanism across time. Additionally, the contributions address genre and forms such as autobiography, games, art, film, museums, and topics such as climate change, speciesism, anthropocentrism, and biopolitics to name a few. This handbook considers posthumanism’s impact across disciplines and areas of study.
Download or read book The Posthuman written by Rosi Braidotti and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Posthuman offers both an introduction and major contribution to contemporary debates on the posthuman. Digital 'second life', genetically modified food, advanced prosthetics, robotics and reproductive technologies are familiar facets of our globally linked and technologically mediated societies. This has blurred the traditional distinction between the human and its others, exposing the non-naturalistic structure of the human. The Posthuman starts by exploring the extent to which a post-humanist move displaces the traditional humanistic unity of the subject. Rather than perceiving this situation as a loss of cognitive and moral self-mastery, Braidotti argues that the posthuman helps us make sense of our flexible and multiple identities. Braidotti then analyzes the escalating effects of post-anthropocentric thought, which encompass not only other species, but also the sustainability of our planet as a whole. Because contemporary market economies profit from the control and commodification of all that lives, they result in hybridization, erasing categorical distinctions between the human and other species, seeds, plants, animals and bacteria. These dislocations induced by globalized cultures and economies enable a critique of anthropocentrism, but how reliable are they as indicators of a sustainable future? The Posthuman concludes by considering the implications of these shifts for the institutional practice of the humanities. Braidotti outlines new forms of cosmopolitan neo-humanism that emerge from the spectrum of post-colonial and race studies, as well as gender analysis and environmentalism. The challenge of the posthuman condition consists in seizing the opportunities for new social bonding and community building, while pursuing sustainability and empowerment.
Download or read book Paper Revolutions written by Sarah E. James and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The experimental practices of a group of artists in the former East Germany upends assumptions underpinning Western art’s postwar histories. In Paper Revolutions, Sarah James offers a radical rethinking of experimental art in the former East Germany (the GDR). Countering conventional accounts that claim artistic practices in the GDR were isolated and conservative, James introduces a new narrative of neo-avantgarde practice in the Eastern Bloc that subverts many of the assumptions underpinning Western art’s postwar histories. She grounds her argument in the practice of four artists who, uniquely positioned outside academies, museums, and the art market, as these functioned in the West, created art in the blind spots of state censorship. They championed ephemeral practices often marginalized by art history: postcards and letters, maquettes and models, portfolios and artists’ books. Through their “lived modernism,” they produced bodies of work animated by the radical legacies of the interwar avant-garde. James examines the work and daily practices of the constructivist graphic artist, painter, and sculptor Hermann Glöckner; the experimental graphic artist and concrete and sound poet Carlfriedrich Claus; the mail artist, concrete poet, and conceptual artist Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt; and the mail artist, “visual poet,” and installation artist Karla Sachse. She shows that all of these artists rejected the idea of art as a commodity or a rarefied object, and instead believed in the potential of art to create collectivized experiences and change the world. James argues that these artists, entirely neglected by Western art history, produced some of the most significant experimental art to emerge from Germany during the Cold War.
Download or read book Conflicting Humanities written by Rosi Braidotti and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-30 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents easy-to-follow recipes for making several servings of main dishes that can be prepared and frozen ahead of time, using bulk-size packages of the meat to make the meals more economical.
Download or read book Exposed written by Stacy Alaimo and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2016-10-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opening with the statement “The anthropocene is no time to set things straight,” Stacy Alaimo puts forth potent arguments for a material feminist posthumanism in the chapters that follow. From trans-species art and queer animals to naked protesting and scientific accounts of fishy humans, Exposed argues for feminist posthumanism immersed in strange agencies and scale-shifting ethics. Including such divergent topics as landscape art, ocean ecologies, and plastic activism, Alaimo explores our environmental predicaments to better understand feminist occupations of transcorporeal subjectivity. She puts scientists, activists, artists, writers, and theorists in conversation, revealing that the state of the planet in the twenty-first century has radically transformed ethics, politics, and what it means to be human. Ultimately, Exposed calls for an environmental stance in which, rather than operating from an externalized perspective, we think, feel, and act as the very stuff of the world.
Download or read book Heritage Practices for Sustainability written by Munyaradzi Mawere and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zimbabwean history is rooted in ethnic and cultural identities, inequalities, and injustices which the post-colonial government has sought to address since national independence in 1980. Marginalisation of some ethnic groups has been one of the persistent problems in contemporary Zimbabwe. Of particular significance to this book is the marginalisation of the BaTonga people of north-western Zimbabwe a marginalisation whose roots are right back to the colonial era. Post-colonial Zimbabwes emphasis on cultural identity and confirmation has, however, prompted the establishment of community museums such as the BaTonga Community Museum (BCM), to promote cultures of the ethnic minorities. This book critically examines the effects and socio-economic contribution of the BCM to the local communities and other sectors of the economy. It draws extensively on and problematizes prevalent debates on the biography of things to surface out the primacy of agency in heritage and sustainability.
