Art as Ritual
Flusser felt that the term “art”– in the West — was almost always understood either as “work”–intended to change the world—or as “communication”—intended to share something with another person. He thought both were wrong....
Category: art
Revolution/Revelation
The image is a still from Paolo Ciregia’s project Perestroika, an account of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014. It was shown as part of the Diffusion 2017 festival in Cardiff, 1 –...
Protreptic Writing
I am grateful to Lambert Wiesing for having described and named a form of writing that does not set out to demonstrate the truth or value of the author’s views as such, but provides...
How to See the World
Introducing a distinctly academic field to general readers is not easy. In his new book How to See the World, the eminent theorist of visual culture Nicholas Mirzoeff undertakes the task of introducing visual...
Made at Roaming
Reproduced here is one of many images made recently at Roaming Penzance (see www.roamingCIC.com for more about the organization). Given that the group meets just once a week, and then only for a...
“Crypto-relics”
In an article in in TLS for April 10 of this year (“Traces of the Holy,”) Matthew Bown raises a question about the ‘symbolic economy’ in which some people pay astronomical sums for works of contemporary...