Art Subjects - General & Miscellaneous
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Overview
Art as Far as the Eye Can See puts art back where it matters -- at the center of politics. Art used to be an engagement between artist and materials but it has now become technologized. Its materials have become light rather than matter. In the 21st Century the new battleground is art as light versus art as matter. Virilio argues that this change reflects how speed and politics - the defining characteristics of the 20th Century – have been transformed in the 21st Century to speed and mass culture. Politics has been replaced with mass culture…and the defining characteristic of mass culture today is cold panic. The same panic which has used terrorism to derail democracy has hijacked the whole art enterprise. This panic is reliant on audio-visual technology to create a new all-seeing, panoptic politics. And the first casualty of this politics is “the art of seeing”. Where art used to talk of the aesthetics of disappearance, it must now confront the disappearance of the aesthetic. In the 21st Century, the new battleground is art as light versus art as matter.
Editorials
From the Publisher
“An exceptional, even visionary mind.” --Leonardo Digital Reviews “If Walter Benjamin had one true intellectual descendant who extended his inquiries into the second half of the twentieth century, this must be Paul Virilio.” --Lev Manovich, author of The Language of New Media "Virilio is an impressive commentator on the conditioning power of the mass media...He flits from image to image like a poet and usually builds to a profound climax.” --The Guardian
Book Details
Published
March 1, 2010
Publisher
Berg Publishers
Pages
1
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9781847885401