Antennae 50 Remaking Nature

Download or read book Antennae #50 Remaking Nature written by Giovanni Aloi and published by Giovanni Aloi. This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This issue of 'Antennae' is part of a project informed by the exhibition 'Making Nature' held at Wellcome Collection in London between the 1st of December 2016 and the 21st of May 2017, and is co-edited with Honor Beddard. Our issue, titled 'Remaking Nature' focuses on the work of contemporary artists whose practices map and untangle important, and yet overlooked, junctions in our coevolutional histories with the rest of the natural world. This issue features the work of many contemporary artists and scholars whose work critically appraises and challenges the methodologies of natural history in order to envision new conceptions nature.

Download or read book The Cultures of Entanglement written by Suzanne Anker and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2024-03-31 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The symbolic meaning of plants, their relevance to religion and the metaphorical provocations in the order of knowledge, culture and political power underline the role of plants as something more than passive objects. Current theoretical and artistic discourses have been seeking access to the world independently of man by focusing on the nonhuman other. The contributors to this volume examine the historical, philosophical and scientific findings that generate this idea. In what way are such perspectives manifest in contemporary art? Do artists develop a particular approach that enables nonhuman life forms like plants, insects or animals to have an impact?

Download or read book Antennae #49 Making Nature written by Giovanni Aloi and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This issue of Antennae, and the next, are informed by the exhibition Making Nature: How We See Animals the exhibition curated by Honor Beddard at Wellcome Collection in London between the 1st of December 2016 and the 21st of May 2017. This first installment, Making Nature, which takes its title from the exhibition, looks at the construction of nature as a cultural pursuit during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It focuses on issues of visibility and invisibility, both cultural and ecological, to critically appraise the methodological approaches that have defined the philosophies of the discipline. Technologies of visibility like taxidermy, dioramas, macro-photography, and illustration are juxtaposed to highlight the complicity of art and science in the production of fictional narratives about the world we live in.

Download or read book Botanical Speculations written by Giovanni Aloi and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ground-breaking scientific research and new philosophical perspectives currently challenge our anthropocentric cultural assumptions of the vegetal world. As humanity begins to grapple with the urgency imposed by climate change, reconsidering human/plant relationships becomes essential to grant a sustainable future on this planet. It is in this context that a multifaceted approach to plant-life can reveal the importance of ecological interconnectedness and lead to a more nuanced consideration of the variety of living organisms and ecosystems with which we share the planet. In Botanical Speculations, researchers, artists, art historians, and activists collaboratively map the uncharted territories of new forms of botanical knowledge. This book emerges from a symposium held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in September 2017, and capitalizes on contemporary arts ability to productively unhinge scientific theories and certainties in order to help us reconsider unquestioned beliefs about this living world.

Download or read book The Disappearance of Butterflies written by Josef H. Reichholf and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-10-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last fifty years our butterfly populations have declined by more than eighty per cent and butterflies are now facing the very real prospect of extinction. It is hard to remember the time when fields and meadows were full of these beautiful, delicate creatures – today we rarely catch a glimpse of the Wild Cherry Sphinx moths, Duke of Burgundy or the even once common Small Tortoiseshell butterflies. The High Brown Fritillary butterfly and the Stout Dart Moth have virtually disappeared. The eminent entomologist and award-winning author Josef H. Reichholf began studying butterflies in the late 1950s. He brings a lifetime of scientific experience and expertise to bear on one of the great environmental catastrophes of our time. He takes us on a journey into the wonderful world of butterflies - from the small nymphs that emerge from lakes in air bubbles to the trusting purple emperors drunk on toad poison - and immerses us in a world that we are in danger of losing forever. Step by step he explains the science behind this impending ecological disaster, and shows how it is linked to pesticides, over-fertilization and the intensive farming practices of the agribusiness. His book is a passionate plea for biodiversity and the protection of butterflies.

Download or read book Speculative Taxidermy written by Giovanni Aloi and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taxidermy, once the province of natural history and dedicated to the pursuit of lifelike realism, has recently resurfaced in the world of contemporary art, culture, and interior design. In Speculative Taxidermy, Giovanni Aloi offers a comprehensive mapping of the discourses and practices that have enabled the emergence of taxidermy in contemporary art. Drawing on the speculative turn in philosophy and recovering past alternative histories of art and materiality from a biopolitical perspective, Aloi theorizes speculative taxidermy: a powerful interface that unlocks new ethical and political opportunities in human-animal relationships and speaks to how animal representation conveys the urgency of addressing climate change, capitalist exploitation, and mass extinction. A resolutely nonanthropocentric take on the materiality of one of the most controversial mediums in art, this approach relentlessly questions past and present ideas of human separation from the animal kingdom. It situates taxidermy as a powerful interface between humans and animals, rooted in a shared ontological and physical vulnerability. Carefully considering a select number of key examples including the work of Nandipha Mntambo, Maria Papadimitriou, Mark Dion, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Roni Horn, Oleg Kulik, Steve Bishop, Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson, and Cole Swanson, Speculative Taxidermy contextualizes the resilient presence of animal skin in the gallery space as a productive opportunity to rethink ethical and political stances in human-animal relationships.

Download or read book The Annotated Mona Lisa written by Carol Strickland and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 2007-10 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like music, art is a universal language. Although looking at works of art is a pleasurable enough experience, to appreciate them fully requires certain skills and knowledge." --Carol Strickland, from the introduction to The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern * This heavily illustrated crash course in art history is revised and updated. This second edition of Carol Strickland's The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern offers an illustrated tutorial of prehistoric to post-modern art from cave paintings to video art installations to digital and Internet media. * Featuring succinct page-length essays, instructive sidebars, and more than 300 photographs, The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern takes art history out of the realm of dreary textbooks, demystifies jargon and theory, and makes art accessible-even at a cursory reading. * From Stonehenge to the Guggenheim and from Holbein to Warhol, more than 25,000 years of art is distilled into five sections covering a little more than 200 pages.