Books on Society, Art Participation and Noise
How Societies Remember by Paul Connerton
Paul Connerton argues that images and recollected knowledge of the past are conveyed and sustained by ritual performances, and that performative memory which until now has been badly neglected.
In treating memory as a cultural rather than an individual faculty, this book provides an account of how bodily practices are transmitted in, and as, traditions. Most studies of memory as a cultural faculty focus on written, or inscribed transmissions of memories. Paul Connerton, on the other hand, concentrates on bodily (or incorporated) practices, and so questions the currently dominant idea that literary texts may be taken as a metaphor for social practices generally. The author argues that images of the past and recollected knowledge of the past are conveyed and sustained by ritual performances and that performative memory is bodily. Bodily social memory is an essential aspect of social memory, but it is an aspect which has until now been badly neglected. An innovative study, this work should be of interest to researchers into social, political and anthropological thought as well as to graduate and undergraduate students.
The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now by Rudolf Frieling and Boris Groys
This new survey covers the rich and varied history of participatory art, from early happenings and performances to current practices that demand audience interaction. As the internet mindset â browsing, sharing, collecting, producing â increasingly permeates every aspect of society, this timely project reveals the ways in which artists and viewers have approached the creation of open works of art. Original essays identify seminal moments in participatory practice from the 1950s to the present day, while a rich array of plates reproduces the work of the movementâs major figures in vivid detail.
Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art by Brandon LaBelle
This is a fascinating overview of the history of sound art. The rise of a prominent auditory culture, as seen in the recent plethora of art exhibitions on sound art, in conjunction with academic programs dedicated to “aural culture”, sonic art, and auditory issues now emerging, reveals the degree to which sound art is lending definition to the 21st century. And yet, sound art still lacks related literature to compliment, and expand, the realm of practice. “Background Noise” sets out an historical overview, while at the same time shaping that history according to what sound art reveals – the dynamics of art to operate spatially, through media of reproduction and broadcast, and in relation to the intensities of communication and its contextual framework.
Brandon LaBelle is a writer and curator who currently lives in Denmark. From 1998 to 2002 he developed and curated an international sound art festival in Los Angeles, Beyond Music; in 2001 he developed and organized Social Music, a series of radio works for Kunstradio in Vienna; in 2002 he curated Concrete Feedback, an exhibition of sound installations working with architecture, presented at the Southern California Institute of Architecture; and in 2002-03 he researched and curated the music section to the exhibition, Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s – 1970s for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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