After humans destroy the world we have created for ourselves, what will be left are the jellyfish. At least, this is the suggestion of the biologist Jeremy Jackson, who argues that the synergistic effects of mass extinction lead to the flourishing of some species – such as jellyfish – over others. Such thriving under the conditions of mass extinction is almost certainly not what Joseph Beuys had in mind when he argued that we are creating the “total artwork of the future social order”. But what would happen if we held these provocations together? Artworks for Jellyfish collects writings from artists, theorists and scholars of science on the question of how art mediates and mitigates our imagination of the future in the wake of an extinction event—or, to put it a little bit differently, how to make artworks for jellyfish.
With contributions by Julian A MP, Amanda Boetzkes, Bug Carlson, Nicole Clouston, Marc Couroux, Silas Fischer, Ted Hiebert, Terrance Houle, Jessica Jacobson-Könefall, Ryuta Nakajima, Sky O’Brien, and Amanda White.
Heidegger and the Work of Art History explores the impact and future possibilities of Heidegger’s philosophy for art history and visual culture in the twenty-first century. Scholars from the fields of art history, visual and material studies, design, philosophy, aesthetics and new media pursue diverse lines of thinking that have departed from Heidegger’s work in order to foster compelling new accounts of works of art and their historicity. This collection also shows how studies in the history and theory of the visual enrich our understanding of Heidegger’s philosophy. In addition to examining the philosopher’s lively collaborations with art historians, and how his longstanding engagement with the visual arts influenced his conceptualization of history, the essays in this volume consider the ontological and ethical implications of our encounters with works of art, the visual techniques that form worlds, how to think about ’things’ beyond human-centred relationships, the moods, dispositions, and politics of art’s history, and the terms by which we might rethink aesthetic judgment and the interpretation of the visible world, from the early modern period to the present day.
With contributions by: Robert Jackson, Ileana Parvu, Bronwen Wilson, Michael Golec, Philip Tonner, Diarmuid Costello, Matthew Bowman, Michael Gnehm, Lori Nel Johnson, Aron Vinegar, Amanda Boetzkes and Whitney Davis.
Amanda Boetzkes 