The Society of the Screen

Name: The Society of the Screen
Price: 70 AUD
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ISBN: 9780262051224

Vilém Flusser’s Radical Prescience

Martha Schwendener

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Paperback

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English

MIT Press
14 April 2026

Philosophy; History of ideas

How a lifelong engagement with experimental art informed the brilliant Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilem Flusser's early vision of a world dominated by glowing screens.

Predicting the importance of technology and images for the twenty-first century as early as the 1970s, Vilem Flusser warned, ""the basic structure of our thinking is about to experience a mutation."" The bewitching images and screens that surround us could lead toward a centrally programmed, totalitarian society-or to another, better one characterized by dialogue and collaboration among humans and new forms of intelligence.

In this book on the idiosyncratic and prescient Czech-Brazilian philosopher, Martha Schwendener explores the profound effect of art on Flusser's thought. The Society of the Screen reveals how Flusser's lifelong engagement with experimental practices-from abstract painting and concrete poetry in Brazil to video, cybernetics, and photography in Europe and the United States-as well as his extensive involvement with the S o Paulo Biennial informed his belief that we were moving from ""history""-a civilization informed by linear writing-into ""post-history,"" dominated by technical images.

Schwendener documents the importance of Flusser's correspondence and collaboration with artists like Mira Schendel, Fred Forest, Wen-Ying Tsai, Harun Farocki, Louis Bec, and Karl Gerstner for the evolution of his ideas.

By: Martha Schwendener
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 241mm, Width: 159mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780262051224
ISBN 10: 0262051222
Pages: 406
Publication Date: 14 April 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Martha Schwendener is an art historian and an art critic for The New York Times. She is a visiting associate professor at New York University and a researcher in residence at the Vilem Flusser Archive, Berlin. She is the editor of Vilem Fusser's Essays // Artforum, and her criticism and essays have been published in Artforum, Art in America, Critical Inquiry, The New Yorker, October, and many other publications.

Reviews for The Society of the Screen: Vilém Flusser’s Radical Prescience

ENDORSEMENTS “Smartly illustrated and beautifully written, Martha Schwendener’s timely book provides a deep dive into the work of a thinker about images and visual information who has never seemed more relevant than right now.” —Geoffrey Batchen, author of Negative/Positive: A History of Photography “A highly innovative book that overcomes the still widely held reductive view of Vilém Flusser as a media theorist by bringing his lifelong interest in art to the forefront.” —Rainer Guldin, Editor-in-Chief, Flusser Studies