The Arts of Logistics: Artistic Production in Supply Chain Capitalism (Post*45) - Softcover

Boyle, Michael Shane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1503640434 ISBN 13: 9781503640436

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2024

Synopsis

We live in a world where nothing is untouched by supply chains―art included. In this major contribution to the study of contemporary culture and supply chains, Michael Shane Boyle has assembled a global inventory of aesthetics since the 1950s that reveals logistics to be a pervasive means of artistic production. The Arts of Logistics provides a new map of supply chain capitalism, scrutinizing how artists retool technologies designed for circulating commodities. What emerges is a magisterial account of the logistics revolution that foregrounds the role played by art in the long downturn of global capitalism.

With chapters on art produced from technologies including ships, barrels, containers, and drones, Boyle narrates the long history of art's connection to logistics, beginning in the transatlantic slave trade and continuing today in Silicon Valley's dreams of automation. The global reach of the artists considered reflects the geographies of supply chain capitalism itself. In taking stock of how performance, sculpture, and popular culture are entangled in trade and racialized labor regimes, Boyle profiles influential work by artists such as Christo and Allan Kaprow alongside that of contemporary figures including Cai Guo-Qiang and Selina Thompson. This incisive study demonstrates that art and logistics are linked by the infrastructures and violence that keep supply chains moving.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Shane Boyle is Senior Lecturer in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1503640434
• ISBN 13: 9781503640436
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 296