Between the Material and the Possible: Infrastructural Re-examination and Speculation in Art
The revisioning of our infrastructural futures, local and global relationalities, and historical and political legacies.

Forming a comprehensive picture of the multiple processes, regulations, institutions, technologies, networks, and operations that we have come to understand as the distributed infrastructural arena in which we act, yield, and plot is a perennial challenge. Over the past decade, a growing number of artists, theorists, curators, and researchers have moved from “institutional critique” to “infrastructural critique,” or toward “infrastructural speculation,” in which they explore the potential of creative infrastructure-related visions and scenarios. In attempts to counter the impasse of “the cancelled future,” art has immersed itself in systemic critiques and propositional thinking, addressing major challenges, such as the rampant financialization of the economy and runaway climate change.

From questions around space settlements to the possibility of repurposing blockchain infrastructures and financial instruments for redistributive purposes, and from the diagrammatic potential of infrastructural thinking in artistic practices to scenario planning and economic strategizing, this collection of new essays brings together critical analysis from a broad group of contributors engaged in the revisioning of our infrastructural futures. Their interrogations span local and global relationalities, historical and political legacies, as well as future-oriented infrastructural hypotheses.
1139455518
Between the Material and the Possible: Infrastructural Re-examination and Speculation in Art
The revisioning of our infrastructural futures, local and global relationalities, and historical and political legacies.

Forming a comprehensive picture of the multiple processes, regulations, institutions, technologies, networks, and operations that we have come to understand as the distributed infrastructural arena in which we act, yield, and plot is a perennial challenge. Over the past decade, a growing number of artists, theorists, curators, and researchers have moved from “institutional critique” to “infrastructural critique,” or toward “infrastructural speculation,” in which they explore the potential of creative infrastructure-related visions and scenarios. In attempts to counter the impasse of “the cancelled future,” art has immersed itself in systemic critiques and propositional thinking, addressing major challenges, such as the rampant financialization of the economy and runaway climate change.

From questions around space settlements to the possibility of repurposing blockchain infrastructures and financial instruments for redistributive purposes, and from the diagrammatic potential of infrastructural thinking in artistic practices to scenario planning and economic strategizing, this collection of new essays brings together critical analysis from a broad group of contributors engaged in the revisioning of our infrastructural futures. Their interrogations span local and global relationalities, historical and political legacies, as well as future-oriented infrastructural hypotheses.
29.95 In Stock
Between the Material and the Possible: Infrastructural Re-examination and Speculation in Art

Between the Material and the Possible: Infrastructural Re-examination and Speculation in Art

by Bassam El Baroni (Editor)
Between the Material and the Possible: Infrastructural Re-examination and Speculation in Art

Between the Material and the Possible: Infrastructural Re-examination and Speculation in Art

by Bassam El Baroni (Editor)

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$29.95 
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Overview

The revisioning of our infrastructural futures, local and global relationalities, and historical and political legacies.

Forming a comprehensive picture of the multiple processes, regulations, institutions, technologies, networks, and operations that we have come to understand as the distributed infrastructural arena in which we act, yield, and plot is a perennial challenge. Over the past decade, a growing number of artists, theorists, curators, and researchers have moved from “institutional critique” to “infrastructural critique,” or toward “infrastructural speculation,” in which they explore the potential of creative infrastructure-related visions and scenarios. In attempts to counter the impasse of “the cancelled future,” art has immersed itself in systemic critiques and propositional thinking, addressing major challenges, such as the rampant financialization of the economy and runaway climate change.

From questions around space settlements to the possibility of repurposing blockchain infrastructures and financial instruments for redistributive purposes, and from the diagrammatic potential of infrastructural thinking in artistic practices to scenario planning and economic strategizing, this collection of new essays brings together critical analysis from a broad group of contributors engaged in the revisioning of our infrastructural futures. Their interrogations span local and global relationalities, historical and political legacies, as well as future-oriented infrastructural hypotheses.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9783956796005
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication date: 08/23/2022
Pages: 312
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Bassam El Baroni is Assistant Professor in Curating at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University, Finland. He is the author of various essays on artists, art, and curating, editor of Fifteen Ways to Leave Badiou, and coeditor, with Ida Soulard and Abinadi Meza, of Manual for a Future Desert.

Table of Contents

Prelude

Deep Learning Infrastructural Critique Ilan Manouach (comic) Marina Vishmidt (text) 9

Section I Infrastructural Critique

Introduction: Infrapolitics after Infrastructure Space Bassam El Baroni 29

Infrastructure as Diagrammatic Disposition: Fareed Armaly's From/To (1999/2002) Revisited Sabeth Buchmann 35

Infrastructure, Ideology, Hegemony Matthew Poole 51

Vapid Virtues, Real Stakes: Diagnosis for Left Art Protocols Ghalya Saadawi 71

Disarticulating Infrastructures: Toward Touchstones for Infrastructural Inquiries Nishant Shah 95

Redistributions Tirdad Zolghadr 109

Section II Infrastructural Speculation

The Currency of Contemporary Art Joao Enxuto Erica Love 117

Mystical Habitats: Art after Earth and Outer-Space Settlements Bogna Konior 137

What Can the Arts Sector Learn from Structural Diversification of Science and Technology Development? A Conversation Diakron (David Hilmer Rex Aslak Aamot Helm) Adam Marblestone 149

Point and Pivot Natalia Zuluaga 167

A Modest Proposal for Preventing Artists from Becoming a Burden to Society, and Making Finance Beneficial to Both Artists and the Public Vermeir Heiremans 185

From the Automation of Relations to the Amplification of Communities: The Rise of DAOs Aude Launay 197

Section III Infrahauntologies: On Invasive Legacies and Futures

Affordances: Degrees of Freedom Wrested from Phantom Narratives Nancy Adajania 213

Abstraction, Abjection, Affectivity: Ontological Horizons of Contemporary Art Václav Janoscik 231

Cybernetic Pasts, Financial Futures: The Calculation of the Unknown Bahar Noorizadeh 245

How To Break Free from the Ghosts of the Future? Cassandra Collective Laura Cugusi Chiara Di Leone Anastasiia Noga 263

Architecture Is Obsolete: Financialization Nostalgia and Real Estate Power Adham Selim 275

Restaging Infrastructural Images That Make the World: Reconfiguring Scale Tom Clark 283

End Matter

Contributors 299

Editor's Acknowledgments 307

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