ISMS: Recuperating Political Radicality in Contemporary Art. 1. Constructing the Political in Contemporary Art

The book reflects the seminar, ISMS 1. which, organized by OCA, took place at the School of Architecture and Design in Oslo in April, 2006. The seminar addressed the complex and problematic relationships between artistic movements, political movements, and individual works. Specific focus was placed on current dilemmas facing art production, how it is for a work to function "critically" today, and how this relates to or, in fact, neglects politics.

The essays in Constructing the Political in Contemporary Art take a step back from the immediate institutional context of recent attempts to reconnect contemporary art to the politics of 1960s and 1970s, in order to reflect upon some of the theoretical issues at stake: the critical structure of the artwork as a site of a dialectic of individuality and collectivity (Peter Osborne), the power of its indexical or "documentary" aspects (Hito Steyerl and Marius Wulfsberg), its use-value as an archive of "intensive life" (Eric Alliez), its "seam with the economic" (David Cunningham), the limits of its "relational possibilities" (Stewart Martin), and its role in making visible the "immaterial" labour of "cognitive capitalism" (Ina Blom).

INDEX

Marta Kuzma and Peter Osborne: Introduction

Peter Osborne: Imaginary Radicalisms: Notes on the Libertarianism of Contemporary Art

Hito Steyerl: Look out, it's real!: Documentarism, Experience, Politics

Marius Wulfsberg: What To Do With What is Left?: Waste, History and Fiction in Don DeLillo's Underworld

Éric Alliez: On (Non-)Painting Considered as a Communist (Non-)Art ...: The Otto Muehl Case

Stewart Martin: Critique of Relational Aesthetics

David Cunningham: A Seam with the Economic: Art, Architecture, Metropolis

Ina Blom: Lamps, Televisuality and Biopolitics: Introductory comments to another history of video art