This edited volume offers an in-depth exploration of Dutch media art from 1985 onwards from many different perspectives. Through early access to the Internet, state subsidies and dedicated institutions and festivals, a vivid counter-cultural environment and a cosmopolitan artistic and intellectual scene the Netherlands hold a unique position in regards to the development of media art.

Introduced by four chapters that retrace the main events and actors (governmental institutions, festivals an...

This thorough study on the work of the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin exposes - in Benjamin’s own metaphor - the ‘dwarf of theology’ hidden in the machinery of his work, his own form of ‘historical materialism’. In doing so it unearths and explains his language theory, his art theory, his most cryptic baroque book, his philosophy of history, and, last but not least, his famous labyrinthine unfinished opus magnum on Paris, The Arcades project (the first philosophical book ...

Mix & Stir, this book’s aim is an endeavour to understand art as being a panhuman phenomenon of all times and cultures; to steer away from the persistent Eurocentric/Western-centric viewpoint towards a transcultural and transnational interconnected model of exchange and processes of interculturalization. Mix & Stir wants to expand this landscape by bringing to the fore new, recalcitrant, queer, idiosyncratic practices and discourses, theories and topics, methods and concerns that open up wa...

This invaluable guide enables students to get the most from their art history course

In de meeste landen ontsnapt het kunstonderwijs niet aan een grootschalige reorganisatie. Onderwijsinstellingen moeten zich steeds meer als ondernemingen opstellen, die om de beste of meeste leerlingen concurreren en hun doel en resultaten in management- en financiële termen uitdrukken. Het onderwijsveld is kortom een markt geworden. Of er daarbinnen nog ruimte voor kunst is, is een belangrijke vraag.

In Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm wordt onderzocht wat de effecten van deze opstelli...

In 'The emancipated museum' the art historian and researcher Steven ten Thije engages in a personal inquiry into the importance of art museums in a society that is becoming ever more fragmented. In spite of the unprecedented success of museums in attracting masses of visitors, the future of the museum is uncertain. Museums may appear calm and self-assured to outsiders, but not even this noble showcase of art is immune to the cracks in society. The tensions between high and low, newcomer and n...

The Weather on 9/9/01 is an essay on historical thinking through an examination of the unstudied minor genre of the newspaper weather map. This type of map first appeared in the middle of the nineteenth century and a was a child of the Industrial Revolution at its height—its parents were the railroad and the telegraph—and has now been made obsolete by the internet and the smartphone. Its history coincides with that of the Anthropocene. Miller shows us how newspaper weather maps present qu...

What happens between a spectator and an art work? How do we experience 'meaning' in a work of art? How can the process of interpretation be understood and articulated? To address these questions, the author explores the field of reception aesthetics, with its central premise that the contemplation of art is a matter of interaction between the art work and the observer.

The fourth instalment of the ‘Teaching Objects’ series revolves around “Creation”. In this art novella the reader is guided by Lisa, a young artist who is facing death. A dialogue with four works by the American painter Cy Twombly emerges from the question of life’s duration, and Lisa discovers the secret of creative speech. The protagonist’s thoughts bring her to Gaeta, a seaside town near Velia, the ancient Greek town in Italy, now named Elea – the place where the school of Pa...