Citizens and Subjects: The Netherlands, For Example - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3905770733 ISBN 13: 9783905770735

Publisher: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst / JRP Ringier, 2008

Synopsis

In 2007, Aernout Mik represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale. Rather than produce a standard catalogue to accompany Mik's acclaimed three-part video installation, curator Maria Hlavajova organized this dense and galvanizing critical reader. Interspersed with provocative black-and-white images from Mik's artworks, Citizens and Subjects looks at the Netherlands as an example of the contemporary western condition at a time when the demands of "national security," the normalization of violence and the maintenance of high levels of fear and anxiety have become part of daily life in the so-called "West." This volume seeks to identify the causes of our current predicament and looks at how our society fails to negotiate the challenges posed by economic globalization, human migration and cross-cultural influence. With contributions by philosophers, social scientists and artists including Marlene Dumas, Aernout Mik, Willem de Rooij and Lawrence Weiner.

About this title

Product Description

334 pages, illustrated

Synopsis

"Citizens and Subjects" takes the state of the Netherlands as an example of the contemporary Western condition. It has now become clear that the ideological vacuum created by the collapse in 1989 of the bipolar world was not filled by any new emancipatory political imagination. Instead, the demands of national security, the normalization of violence, and the maintenance of high levels of fear and anxiety have become part of daily life in the nation states of the so-called West. This critical reader seeks to identify the causes of our current predicament and how our society fails to negotiate the challenges posed by economic globalization, human migration, and cross-cultural influence. It asks how art and artists can react to these changes and what possibilities they can create to see things differently.The book contains contributions by artists, philosophers, and social scientists based in the Netherlands who critically analyze the mechanisms at play.

The texts ground the abstract principles of citizens and subjects in the concrete social axes of ethnicity, nationalism, gender, and religion, exploring the potential for new emancipatory thinking and questioning whether art can be a space to reconceive current forms of subjection. This book is part of the Dutch presentation at the 52nd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale and accompanies the project of artist Aernout Mik in the Dutch Pavilion as well as a series of talks and discussions taking place in the Netherlands as an extension of the Pavilion, curated by Maria Hlavajova.

Edition details

• Publisher: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst / JRP Ringier
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3905770733
• ISBN 13: 9783905770735
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Braidotti Rosi, Esche Charles, Hlavajova Maria