In cities around the world a new urban condition is spreading

rapidly: an ever-increasing push for ‘perfection’, efficiency

and control and the active eradication of any

aberration, friction or alternative. The smooth city with its

sanitized spaces and new technologies compresses urban

life into a seamless experience. While the demand for safe,

clean, and well-functioning urban environments is understandable,

the rise of the smooth city undermines the democratic

nature and emancipatory po...

Over the last few decades the term ‘bootlegging’—a practice once relegated to smugglers and copyright infringers—has become understood as a creative act. Debates about homage, appropriation, and theft that are common in the art world, are now being held in the spheres of corporate branding, social media, and the creative industry as a whole. Today, bootlegging has become fetishized as an aesthetic in and of itself, influencing everything from underground record labels to DIY T-shirts,...

Imaginative Bodies contains a series of in-depth conversations with dancers and choreographers, composers, visual artists, Hip Hop artists, dramaturgs, a lighting designer and a puppeteer. The overall theme is defined by the body, both in relation to the place it takes in the artist's work, and in relation to wider debates on the body in philosophy, science, medicine, anthropology, and the arts. Depending on the affinities of the artist, a more specific theme has been defined for each dialogu...

Capitalism could not exist without the coins, banknotes, documents, information graphics, interfaces, branding, and advertisements made by graphic designers. Even anti-consumerist strategies such as social design and speculative design are appropriated to serve economic growth. It seems design is locked in a cycle of exploitation and extraction, furthering inequality and environmental collapse. CAPS LOCK uses clear language and visual examples to show how graphic design and capitalism are ine...

Geert Lovink is een Nederlandse mediatheoreticus, internetcriticus en auteur van Uncanny Networks (2002), Dark Fiber (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016), Organization after Social Media (met Ned Rossiter, 2018) en Sad by Design (2019). In 2004 richtte hij het Institute of Network Cultures op aan de Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA). Dit centrum organiseert conferenties, publicaties en onderzoeksnetwerken zoals Video ...

Sculpture as a specific medium is rarely investigated within a deeply cultural, philosophical context, nor within visual art itself. Whilst discussions about installation art, performance art, or other 3D art forms are widespread, the discourse on sculpture seems to be stuck in historical, material, or thematic frameworks. This is a loss for our understanding of art in general, and of sculpture in particular. In order to assess contemporary art practices, one should have a better understandin...

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.

Who are you, who do you want to be, and what do you need to do to get there? We are constantly pushed to lead the perfect life. The media present us with a picture of an existence in which we’re rich, beautiful, happy and successful. We design our own identity, create our own image and present ourselves in the way we want to be seen. The various imaginative methods and ideas for upgrading oneself are seen as new forms of creativity, or Self-Design. Help Your Self is an inspiration book to d...

Kunst is een vorm van denken, een bijzondere bron van kennis. In deze publicatie wordt de lezer ingeleid in de methode van Art-Based Learning: een benadering die de toeschouwer in staat stelt om met kunstwerken in dialoog te gaan.

Aan de hand van drie triptieken laat de auteur zien hoe kunstwerken werken als “sprekende objecten”. Deze studie is bedoeld voor studenten en docenten theologie, filosofie en antropologie, theater- en filmwetenschap, literatuurwetenschappen en (kunst)geschiedeni...