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Nervous Systems

Art, Systems, and Politics since the 1960s

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Book

Pages: 304

Illustrations: 31 illustrations

Published: February 2022

Editors: Johanna Gosse, Timothy Stott

Contributors: Cristina Albu, Amanda Boetzkes, Brianne Cohen, Kris Cohen, Jaimey Hamilton Faris, Christine Filippone, Francis Halsall, Judith Rodenbeck, Dawna Schuld, Luke Skrebowski, John Tyson

The contributors to Nervous Systems reassess contemporary artists' and critics' engagement with social, political, biological, and other systems as a set of complex and relational parts: an approach commonly known as systems thinking. Demonstrating the continuing relevance of systems aesthetics within contemporary art, the contributors highlight the ways that artists adopt systems thinking to address political, social, and ecological anxieties. They cover a wide range of artists and topics, from the performances of the Argentinian collective the Rosario Group and the grid drawings of Charles Gaines to the video art of Singaporean artist Charles Lim and the mapping of global logistics infrastructures by contemporary artists like Hito Steyerl and Christoph Büchel. Together, the essays offer an expanded understanding of systems aesthetics in ways that affirm its importance beyond technological applications detached from cultural contexts.

Contributors. Cristina Albu, Amanda Boetzkes, Brianne Cohen, Kris Cohen, Jaimey Hamilton Faris, Christine Filippone, Johanna Gosse, Francis Halsall, Judith Rodenbeck, Dawna Schuld, Luke Skrebowski, Timothy Stott, John Tyson

Praise

“A vital and much-needed contribution to the literature on art and systems discourse. If the history of art has largely treated systems theory in terms of its technocratic implications in the 1960s, Nervous Systems expands the field to postwar and contemporary art, addressing race, gender, ecology, and global networks as among its most urgent questions.” - Pamela M. Lee, author of Think Tank Aesthetics: Midcentury Modernism, the Cold War, and the Neoliberal Present

“Nervous Systems is one of the most impressive and conceptually nuanced collections of art historical essays that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. A model of what contemporary arts scholarship can look like, this volume is eminently readable and, most of all, teachable.” - Jonathan Eburne, author of Outsider Theory: Intellectual Histories of Unorthodox Ideas

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Johanna Gosse is Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Idaho.

Timothy Stott is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, and author of Play and Participation in Contemporary Arts Practices. 

Table Of Contents

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Foreword / Judith Rodenbeck  vii
Acknowledgments  ix
After the Breakdown: Sixty Years of Systems Art / Johanna Gosse and Timothy Stott  1
Section I: Systems Aesthetics to Systems Politics
1. Jack Burnham Redux: Reappraising System Aesthetics / Luke Skrebowski  31
2. The Artist as "Weatherman": Hans Haacke's Critical Meteorology / John Tyson  55
3. Desalineación: Open Systems as Social Transformation in Tucumán Arde / Christine Filippone  78
Section II: Nervous Interfaces
4. The Irresolutions of Charles Gaines / Kris Cohen  103
5. Light and Space as Institutional Critique / Dawna Schuld  125
6. One among Many: Experiencing Complexity in Participatory Art Systems / Cristina Albu  148
Section III: The Contemporary Art World Described as a System
7. Abstraction, Dispersion, Deflation, and Noise: Liam Gillick's Disappointing Systems / Francis Halsall  173
8. Aesthetic Action as Planetary Praxis: Mel Chin's The Arctic Is . . . / Amanda Boetzkes  192
9. Mapping, SEA STATE, and State Violence on the Shores of Singapore / Brianne Cohen  213
10. Toward Infrastructure Art: Containerization, Black Box Logistics, and New Distribution Complexes / Jaimey Hamilton Faris  235
Selected Bibliography  261
Contributors  277
Index 281

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Sales/Territorial Rights: World

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Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-1476-8 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-1382-2 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-2205-3 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022053