Delirium and Resistance: Activist Art and the Crisis of Capitalism - Softcover

Sholette, Gregory

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745336841 ISBN 13: 9780745336848

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2017

Synopsis

In the aftermath of the 2016 US elections, Brexit, and a global upsurge of nationalist populism, it is evident that the delirium and the crisis of neoliberal capitalism is now the delirium and crisis of liberal democracy and its culture. And though capitalist crisis does not begin within art, art can reflect and amplify its effects, to positive and negative ends. In this follow-up to his influential 2010 book, Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture, Sholette engages in critical dialogue with artists' collectives, counter-institutions, and activist groups to offer an insightful, firsthand account of the relationship between politics and art in neoliberal society. Sholette lays out clear examples of art's deep involvement in capitalism: the dizzying prices achieved by artists who pander to the financial elite, the proliferation of museums that contribute to global competition between cities in order to attract capital, and the strange relationship between art and rampant gentrification that restructures the urban landscape. With a preface by noted author Lucy R. Lippard and an introduction by theorist Kim Charnley, Delirium and Resistance draws on over thirty years of critical debates and practices both in and beyond the art world to historicize and advocate for the art activist tradition that radically-and, at times, deliriously-entangles the visual arts with political struggles.

About this title

Review:

''Read this book and you will never see contemporary art the same way again. So much of what's wrong with the global economy is wrong with the establishment art world and Sholette has been examining this for a long time in everything he does as an art person. In the many art worlds that exist, we’re happy and proud to be a part of his."
(Guerrilla Girls)

''Sholette is representative of a new artist type that emerged after Conceptualism in that his work as a critic, theorist, and curator is central to his practice as an artist. No-one else has come up with a category that rivals 'dark matter' as a hermeneutic for analysing the current political economy of art and the economic situation of artists, in all their variety. No-one else has quite the long-term commitment to collective practice or the record of publications on the theme. He is one of the most cogent artist-theorists currently working in the domain of social practice art.''
(Andrew Hemingway, University College London)

"Shifting between artistic practice, curating, writing, and activism, Sholette has been surfing the waves of activist art for more than three decades. His work is based on the multitude of lines drawn from the political art of the 20th century and expanding its realm as it reaches out to the transversal activisms of the 21st century. Delirium and Resistance is a manifesto documenting these developments in their broadest forms, from 1980s anti-gentrification efforts and 1990s tactical media practitioners, to the post-occupy-practices of our current circumstances."
(Gerald Raunig, author of DIVIDUUM: Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution, Part 1)

From Lucy R. Lippard’s Preface to Delirium and Resistance:
“Amnesia attacks and ongoing reinventions of the wheel are two things that have plagued social activist art and the Left for as long as I can remember (and I cut my activist teeth with the Art Workers Coalition in the anti-Vietnam war era). For the two decades represented in Delirium and Resistance, Greg Sholette has been educating us about the threads connecting past and present trajectories of activist/ community/ political/ socially engaged art. His brilliant essays are based in active participation, lived experience, and unrelenting critical examination of art from the early 1980s to the present, with all its complex global twigs and branches, visible and invisible successes and failures. He consistently questions and undermines conventional ideologies, as he did when I first worked with him in Political Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D) in 1980. Since then he has continued to catalyze with passion while theorizing with subtlety. No-one else does precisely what he does, or does it as well.”

About the Author:

Gregory Sholette is a New York City-based artist, writer, and core member of the activist art collective Gulf Labor Coalition. He is coauthor of It’s the Political Economy, Stupid; and Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture, both also published by Pluto Press. He currently teaches in the Queens College art department at City University of New York. Kim Charnley is a UK-based art theorist and art historian whose work examines the relationship between politics and contemporary art. Lucy R. Lippard is Lucy R. Lippard is an internationally known activist, feminist, art critic, and curator noted for her writings on contemporary art including Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object, 1973; and Get the Message: a decade of art for social change,1984, and Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0745336841
• ISBN 13: 9780745336848
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Charnley Kim