In Probing Arts and Emergent Forms of Life Michael M. J. Fischer calls for a new anthropology of the arts that attends to the materialities and technologies of the world as it exists today. Fischer examines the work of key Southeast and East Asian artists within the crucibles of unequal access, geopolitics, reverberating past traumas, and emergent socialities. He outlines the work of artist-theorists---including Entang Wiharso, Sally Smart, Charles Lim, Zai Kuning, and Kiran Kumar---who speculate about changing the world in ways that are attuned to its cultivation, repair, and rethinking in the Anthropocene. Their artistic vocabulary not only undoes Western art models and categories; it probes the unfolding future, addresses past trauma, and creates contested, vibrant, and flourishing spaces. Throughout Indonesia, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam---and from Kumar's experimental dance to Kuning's rattan and beeswax ghost ships to Lim's videography of Singapore from the sea---Fischer argues that these artists' theoretical discourses should be privileged over those of the curators, historians, critics, and other gatekeepers who protect and claim art worlds for themselves.
By:
Michael M. J. Fischer
Imprint: Duke University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 680g
ISBN: 9781478017059
ISBN 10: 1478017058
Series: Experimental Futures
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 26 May 2023
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Challenging Art as Cultural Systems 12 2. Synthetic Realism: Postcinema in the Anthropocene 31 3. Feminage, Warang, and the Nervous System (Hauntology and Curation) 71 4. Nomadic Video in Turbulent Sea States: How Art Becomes Critique 100 5. Water Notes on Rattan Strings 132 6. Raw Moves and Layered Communication across the Archipelago Seas 165 Epilogue. Probing Art and Emerging Forms of Life 197 Appendix. The Year 2020 and the Camouflage Painting Series: Conversations with Entang Wiharso 215 Notes 221 References 253 Index 281
Michael M. J. Fischer is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of numerous books, including At the Pivot of East and West: Ethnographic, Literary, and Filmic Arts and Anthropology in the Meantime: Experimental Ethnography, Theory, and Method for the Twenty-First Century, both also published by Duke University Press.
Reviews for Probing Arts and Emergent Forms of Life
"""[A] dynamic ethnography of prominent works by contemporary artists in Asia ... Probing Arts and Emergent Forms of Life goes far beyond introducing innovative artists and describing their artworks. It situates contemporary Asian art within ethnographic and geo-political contexts."" -- Robin Visser * Journal of Contemporary Asia *"
