Documents of Contemporary Art: Activism is an anthology edited by Tom Snow and Afonso Dias Ramos that I proofread as a part of my placement at Whitechapel Gallery.
Purchase here
From ACT UP and its affiliate groups since the dawn of the AIDS crisis to the counter-spectacle and street theatrics of the so-called Arab Spring and Occupy, to ongoing protest movements such as Black Lives Matter, Rhodes Must Fall, and Decolonize This Place, activist aesthetics has proven increasingly difficult to define under traditional classifications. Resurgent campaigns for decolonial reckoning, ecological justice, gender equality, indigenous rights and antiracist pedagogies indicate that the role of activism in contemporary art practice urges a critical reassessment. One pressing question is whether contemporary art's most radical politics now takes place outside, against, or in spite of, conventional sites of display such as museums, biennials, and galleries.
Artists surveyed include: ACT UP, Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Allora & Calzadilla, Tania Bruguera, Black Audio Film Collective, Chto Delat, Andrea Fraser, Nan Goldin, Sanja Iveković, Gulf Labor, Amar Kanwar, Leslie Labowitz, Liberate Tate, Sethembile Msezane, Zanele Muholi, Jan Nikolai Nelles & Nora Al-Badri, Decolonize This Place, Michael Rakowitz, Oliver Ressler.
Writers include: Dave Beech, Judith Butler, Amílcar Cabral, Elias Canetti, Douglas Crimp, Jodi Dean, Gilles Deleuze, T.J. Demos, Nina Dubrovsky, Süreyyya Evren, Catherine Flood,Matthew Fuller, David Graeber, Gavin Grindon Félix Guattari, Brian Holmes, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Lucy Lippard, Yates McKee, MTL Collective, Gregory Sholette, Françoise Vergès, Peter Weiss, Eyal Weizman.
Writers include: Dave Beech, Judith Butler, Amílcar Cabral, Elias Canetti, Douglas Crimp, Jodi Dean, Gilles Deleuze, T.J. Demos, Nina Dubrovsky, Süreyyya Evren, Catherine Flood,Matthew Fuller, David Graeber, Gavin Grindon Félix Guattari, Brian Holmes, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Lucy Lippard, Yates McKee, MTL Collective, Gregory Sholette, Françoise Vergès, Peter Weiss, Eyal Weizman.
Paperback, 240pp, 210 x 145 mm
First published 2023
