This article examines the work of three artists – Harun Farocki, Hito Steyerl and Rabih Mroué – who in different ways mobilize the cinematic device of ‘shot/countershot’ in two distinct post-cinematic contexts (the moving image installation and the performance lecture) as a tool for scrutinizing images of war and violence from divergent historical, socio-economic, geopolitical and ethical perspectives. In returning to and reworking this classical cinematic device as an experimental and essayistic mode of montage and critical reflection, all (...) three artists, as I argue, variously seek to counter the ideological naturalization and interpretive framing of representations of war and violence under conditions of digitalization and globalization, as well as to interrogate the interconnections between forms of direct, symbolic and systemic violence. (shrink)

Art creates a specific relation to time and especially to the present moment. It opens the experience of the present towards its indeterminacy and emergence. On the contrary, AI does not know the present. It recognizes only the past and future. We could even say that artificial neural networks do not “know” time at all. Instead, they know only logical functions which process patterns of information. Yet, what makes time “time” is genuine transformation, which happens outside of the abstract realm (...) of logic. I support these observations by analysing two works of art: Bill Viola’s The Raft (2004) and Hito Steyerl’s This Is the Future (2019). While artistic creation opens up the intervals “in-between seconds” for an unpredictable and transformative event to occur (The Raft), AI closes these intervals and fastens the future into predictability calculated on the basis of past data (This Is the Future). Although this machinic operation makes the present even more unpredictable and prone to catastrophes, its potential for transformation seems to be withdrawn. (shrink)

Exploring an aesthetics of complexity relevant to contemporary art, the artist/author discusses the 56th Venice Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor, in light of Philip Galanter’s essay ‘Complexism and the role of evolutionary art’. Artworks by Steve McQueen, Isaac Julien, Mika Rottenberg, Hito Steyerl, Im Heung-Soon, Katrīna Neiburga and Andris Eglītis are related to concepts of emergence, chaos, feedback, generative process, and networks, and writings by philosopher Manuel Delanda, sociologist Saskia Sassen and physicist James P. Crutchfield. As one of (...) the most influential international exhibitions of contemporary art, the Venice Biennale is considered a bellwether of future trends; this edition called ‘All the World’s Futures’ presents artwork in context with a dissolving binary paradigm of communism/capitalism that fails to adequately address labour, environmental and immigration issues. The author concludes that an approach informed by complexity theory holds more promise, aesthetically and politically. (shrink)

L’artification au sens fort est un phénomène qui remonte à Duchamp et à ses ready-mades. Je propose de comprendre ces processus comme des processus de « cognification », consistant à transformer en dispositifs de réflexion tout objet ou action non cognitif. Un exemple classique est la découverte d’une boîte à chaussures de Gabriel Orozco à la Biennale de Venise en 1993. L’artification récente de la recherche montre que les projets de recherche artistique, en plus d’être des outils de réflexion, peuvent (...) transmettre une véritable connaissance des faits. Deux exemples sont proposés, l’un de l’artiste allemand Hito Steyerl et l’autre du groupe international Forensic Architecture. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the philosophical apprehension of the face through art history in order to signal a moment of rupture in the contemporary times of the face and its signifying relationship to the subject. Drawing from Francis Galton’s nineteenth century photographic experiments on analytical portraiture, one sees how the face when conceived as an atlas, functions very differently for the subject and its recognition than when understood as a mere image. With the advent of futuristic technology like AI (...) and machine learning feeding in much of our technocratic imaginations, where does the face and its constituency lie? Modernist artists found in the face, various motivations of their own – it was a field to explore their own subjectivities and those inclined towards the transcendental managed to liberate the subject from its image i.e. the face. This manner of freeing the subject of its image and thinking of the face as a structure of the subject, has potential to help us imagine new kinds of polyvalent subjectivities, as can be seen in works of contemporary artist- philosophers like Hito Steyerl. This paper articulates this journey of the face which began its story as the constitutive technology of the subject in the 19th century but today find its best reckoning as an insufficient one, in our quest for understanding new post-humanist subjectivities. (shrink)

In this paper, I reflect on the puzzle that machine learning presents to social theory to develop an account of its distinct impact on social reality. I start by presenting how machine learning has presented a challenge to social theory as a research subject comprising both familiar and alien characteristics (1.). Taking this as an occasion for theoretical inquiry, I then propose a conceptual framework to investigate how algorithmic models of social phenomena relate to social reality and what their stochastic (...) mode of operation entails in terms of their sociality (2.). Analyzed through a theoretical lens that relies on central tenets of sociological systems theory, I find that machine learning implies a distinct epistemic transformation, based on how algorithmic modeling techniques process meaning as represented in data embedded in vector space. Building on this characterization, I introduce my conceptualization of stochastic technology as distinct from mechanistic technologies that rely on causal fixation (3.). Based on this understanding, I suggest that real-world applications of machine learning are often characterized by a constitutive tension between the stochastic properties of their outputs and the ways in which they are put to use in practice. Focussing on the large language models LaMDA and ChatGPT, I examine the epistemological implications of LLMs to account for the confusion of correlation and causality as the root of this tension. Next, I illustrate my theoretical conception by way of discussing an essay on image models by German media artist Hito Steyerl (4.). Following a critical reflection on Steyerl's characterization of Stable Diffusion as a “white box ”, I finally propose to conceive ofmachine learning-based technologies as stochastic contingency machines that transform social indeterminacy into contingent observations of social phenomena (5.) In this perspective, machine learning constitutes an epistemic technology that operates on meaning as extractable from data by means of algorithmic data modeling techniques to produce stochastic accounts of social reality. (shrink)

Introduction : from victims and perpetrators to implicated subjects -- The transmission belt of domination : theorizing the implicated subject -- On (not) being a descendant : implicated subjects and the legacies of slavery -- Progress, progression, procession : William Kentridge's implicated aesthetic -- From Gaza to Warsaw : multidirectional memory and the perpetuator -- Under the sign of suitcases : the Holocaust internationalism of Marceline Loridan-Ivens -- "Germany is in Kurdistan" : Hito Steyerl's images of implication -- (...) Conclusion : transfiguring implication : eleven theses. (shrink)

The contributors to Nervous Systems reassess contemporary artists' and critics' engagement with social, political, biological, and other systems as a set of complex and relational parts: an approach commonly known as systems thinking. Demonstrating the continuing relevance of systems aesthetics within contemporary art, the contributors highlight the ways that artists adopt systems thinking to address political, social, and ecological anxieties. They cover a wide range of artists and topics, from the performances of the Argentinian collective the Rosario Group and the (...) grid drawings of Charles Gaines to the video art of Singaporean artist Charles Lim and the mapping of global logistics infrastructures by contemporary artists like Hito Steyerl and Christoph Büchel. Together, the essays offer an expanded understanding of systems aesthetics in ways that affirm its importance beyond technological applications detached from cultural contexts. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, art historian and critic Sven Lütticken focuses on aesthetic practice in a rapidly expanding cultural sphere. He analyzes its transformation by the capitalist cultural revolution, whose reshaping of art's autonomy has wrought a field of afters and posts. In a present moment teeming with erosions - where even history and the human are called into question - 'Cultural revolution: aesthetic practice after autonomy' reconsiders these changing values, for relegating such notions safely to the past betrays (...) their possibilities for potential today. Lütticken discusses practices that range from Black Mask to Subversive Aktion, from Krautonomy to Occupy, from the Wet Dream Film Festival in the early 1970s to Jonas Staal's recently established New World Academy. Within these pages Scarlett Johansson meets Paul Chan, Walid Raad, and Hito Steyerl, and Dr. Zira from Planet of the Apes mingles with the likes of Paul Lafargue and Alexandre Kojève. (shrink)

Discussions of the object as a key to understanding central aspects of modern and contemporary art. Artists increasingly refer to "post-object-based" work while theorists engage with material artifacts in culture. A focus on "object-based" learning treats objects as vectors for dialogue across disciplines. Virtual imaging enables the object to be abstracted or circumvented, while immaterial forms of labor challenge materialist theories. This anthology surveys such reappraisals of what constitutes the "objectness" of production, with art as its focus. Among the topics (...) it examines are the relation of the object to subjectivity; distinctions between objects and things; the significance of the object's transition from inert mass to tool or artifact; and the meanings of the everyday in the found object, repetition in the replicated or multiple object, loss in the absent object, and abjection in the formless or degraded object. It also explores artistic positions that are anti-object; theories of the experimental, liminal or mental object; and the role of objects in performance. The object becomes a prism through which to reread contemporary art and better understand its recent past. Artists surveyed include Georges Adéagbo, Art in Ruins, Iain Baxter, Louise Bourgeois, Pavel Büchler, Lygia Clark, Claude Closky, Brian Collier, Jimmie Durham, Fischli & Weiss, Luca Frei, Meschac Gaba, Isa Genzken, Gruppe Geflecht, Eva Hesse, Mike Kelley, John Latham, Antje Majewski, Gustav Metzger, Cady Noland, Gabriel Orozco, Adrian Piper, Falke Pisano, Eva Rothschild, Aura Satz, Kenneth Snelson, Hito Steyerl, Josef Strau, Alina Szapocznikow, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Erwin Wurm Writers include Homi K. Bhabha, Jack Burnham, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Lynne Cooke, Gillo Dorfles, Jean Fisher, Ferreira Gullar, Charles Harrison, Paulo Herkenhoff, Julia Kristeva, Bruno Latour, Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger, Jean-François Lyotard, Lev Manovich, Ursula Meyer, Bruno Munari, Georges Perec, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Dieter Roelstraete, Howard Singerman, Nancy Spector, Marcus Steinweg, Anne Wagner, Gérard Wajcman, Slavoj Zizek. (shrink)

_An exploration of the relationship between contemporary art, politics, and activism, Artists Remake the World introduces readers to the political ambitions of contemporary art in the early twenty-first century and puts forward a new, wide-ranging account of art’s political potential. Surveying such innovations as evidence-driven art, socially engaged art, and ecological art, the book explores how artists have attempted to offer bold solutions to the world’s problems. Vid Simoniti offers original perspectives on contemporary art and its capacity as a force (...) for political and social change. At its best, he argues, contemporary art allows us to imagine utopias and presents us with hard truths, which mainstream political discourse cannot yet articulate. Covering subjects such as climate change, social justice, and global inequality, Simoniti introduces the reader to a host of visionary contemporary artists from across the globe, including Ai Weiwei, Olafur Eliasson, Wangechi Mutu, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, and Hito Steyerl. Offering a philosophy of contemporary art as an experimental branch of politics, the book equips the reader with a new critical apparatus for thinking about political art today. (shrink)

Restrictive border protection policies directed toward managing the flow of refugees coming into neoliberal democracies (and out of failing nation-states) are a defining feature of contemporary politics. In this book, Verónica Tello analyses how contemporary artists-such as Tania Bruguera, Isaac Julien, Rosemary Laing, Dinh Q. Lé, Dierk Schmidt, Hito Steyerl, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green-negotiate their diverse subject positions while addressing and taking part in the production of images associated with refugee experiences and histories. Tello argues that their (...) practices, which manifest across a range of contexts including Cuba, the United States, Australia and Europe, represent an emergent, global paradigm of contemporary art, 'counter-memorial aesthetics'. Counter-Memorial Aesthetics, Tello argues, is characterized by its conjunction of heterogeneous signifiers and voices of many times and places, generating an experimental, non-teleological approach to the construction of contemporary history, which also takes into account the complex, disorienting spatial affects of globalization. Spanning performance art, experimental 'history painting', aftermath photography and video installation, counter-memorial aesthetics bring to the fore, Tello argues, how contemporary refugee flows and related traumatic events critically challenge and conflict with many existing, tired if not also stubborn notions of national identity, borders, history and memory. Building on the writings of such thinkers as Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière, this book offers a useful concept of 'counter-memory' for the twenty-first century. It shows how counter-memorial aesthetics is not only central to the nexus of contemporary art and refugee histories but also how it can offer a way of being critically present with many other, often interrelated, global crises in the contemporary era. (shrink)

In Documents of Utopia: The Politics of Experimental Ethnography, Paolo Magagnoli has undertaken the complex task of linking different aesthetic contexts through a study of experimental documentary audiovisual projects, treating the work of contemporary artists such as Hito Steyerl, Joachim Koester, Tacite Dean, Matthew Buckingham, Zoe Leonard, Jean-Luc Moulène, Ilye and Emilie Kabakov, Jon Thompson and Alison Craighead, and Aniri Sala. In what follows, I wish to develop three critical arguments that I hope will illuminate the book's central (...) claims. Magagnoli's main goal is to understand how these artists' utopian vision has undergone a temporal shift that is more preoccupied with remembering the past than... (shrink)

Background: Despite the reported harms and ethical concerns about physical restraint use in the critical care settings, nurses’ intention to apply them is unequal across countries. According to the theory of planned behaviour, eliciting nurses’ beliefs regarding the use of physical restraints would provide additional social information about nurses’ intention to perform this practice. Aim: To explore the salient behavioural, normative and control beliefs underlying the intention of critical care nurses to use physical restraints from the theory of planned behaviour. (...) Research design: A belief elicitation study was conducted. Participants and research context: Twenty-six critical care nurses were purposively sampled across gender, work-shift patterns and professional experience in five intensive care units of three hospitals in Spain. Data were obtained from a nine-item open-ended questionnaire and a focus group. Deductive content analysis was performed. Ethical considerations: Ethical approval was obtained from the hospital ethics committee. Participants were assured their participation was voluntary. Findings: Nurses framed the use of restraints as a way of prioritising patients’ physical safety. They referred to contextual factors as the main reasons to justify their application. Nurses perceived that their decision is approved by other colleagues and the patients’ relatives. Some nurses started advocating against their use, but felt powerless to change this unsafe practice within an unfavourable climate. Control beliefs were linked to patients’ medical condition, availability of alternative solutions, analgo-sedation policies and work organisation. Discussion: Safety arguments based on the surrounding work environment were discussed. Conclusion: Nurses’ behavioural and control beliefs were related. Nurses should be trained in alternatives to physical restraint use. The impact of analgo-sedation protocols, relatives’ involvement, leadership support and intensive care unit restraint policies on physical restraint practices need to be revised. Further research is required to explore why nurses do not act with moral courage to change this harmful practice. (shrink)

El término Gelassenheit aparece en la obra de Heidegger como temple de ánimo vinculado al modo de vida del ser humano en la época de la consumación de la metafísica, en la época técnica. Nos proponemos aquí rastrear el origen semántico del concepto de serenidad en la analítica existenciaria de Ser y Tiempo y en concreto en relación a la autenticidad, al cuidado y a la existencia cadente. Se descubre así que el trabajo de 1927 aporta las líneas decisivas de (...) la serenidad relativas, en definitiva, a la pregunta sobre cómo se ha de soportar la existencia. (shrink)

Resumen:El término Gelassenheit aparece en la obra de Heidegger como temple de ánimo vinculado al modo de vida del ser humano en la época de la consumación de la metafísica, en la época técnica. Nos proponemos aquí rastrear el origen semántico del concepto de serenidad en la analítica existenciaria de Ser y Tiempo y en concreto en relación a la autenticidad, al cuidado y a la existencia cadente. Se descubre así que el trabajo de 1927 aporta las líneas decisivas de (...) la serenidad relativas, en definitiva, a la pregunta sobre cómo se ha de soportar la existencia.Palabras clave: Serenidad; Heidegger; Cuidado; Angustia; Caída; Autenticidad. (shrink)

ヒトと自然の交流の産物として生まれた田舎の景色には、どこか安堵する懐かしさがある。しかし、このような田舎、里山は今どれだけ残っているだろうか?21世紀にむかって、ヒトと自然環境、その産物としての文化遺 産のあり方が地球規模で問われている。本書は、21世紀にむかって文化遺産のあり方を問う。.

生殖医療・遺伝子改変等の広範な領域におけるキーコンセプトとしての「ヒト胚の道徳的地位」，種々の宣言等で使用されながら意味が曖昧な「人間の尊厳」を多角的に考察する。.

「生命倫理」は研究を不当に妨げている?ヒト由来試料を用いた研究から生じる「倫理的問題」とは何なのか?法学からのアプローチにより、現実的な規制枠組みの確立に向け、基本から問い直す。.

The trajectory of yoga has been long and steady. It was only natural that it would become an official item in the global discourse on well-being and health, leading to an International Day of Yoga. Nevertheless, there are various preconceptions about the practice, as well as different political and social issues that are worth querying. What and whose is yoga? What sort of disputes does this bear in the religious arena within India? Does the novel international celebration bridge the gap (...) between different cultural and geopolitical worlds? Is there an implied political agenda? This paper will offer both a brief account of the International Day of Yoga, and a critical view on all these issues with a view to foster a wider debate. (shrink)

320年あまり続く不変不滅の「先用後利」は、いかに生まれ、いかに「富の山」を築いたか。仕事スタイルを一新する「完全な商人」の物語。.