Bøger af Anselm Franke

Departing from the figure of the Taowu, a Chinese mythological monster of evil inclination used recently by historians and writers to symbolize the violent fate of Chinese utopian modernity, this publication interrogates the role of systemic and structural violence in the making of modernity and its artistic representations, and uses the monster as a vantage point to capture global dimensions of the current crisis of social imaginaries.

Beyond contemporary disclosures about mass surveillance by intelligence services, the promises inherent in "big data" determine discourses about future innovations and systems of classification in government and industry, which aim to increasingly transform political and systemic questions into those of technological management. The promises of participation and "digital democracy" stand in contrast to new forms of cybernetic control and the modulation of social behaviour on an unprecedented scale. The countless sensors of our ubiquitous digital and technological infrastructures have united the state, industry, body, and technology into ever more complex "nervous systems". This nervousness is revealed in particular where relationships of power and participation come to the fore, namely in the "social question". The publication assembles a combination of contemporary art -- complemented by contributions from experts, theorists, and researchers, presenting contextualized historical documents, artefacts, and other objects. Nervous Systems appeared in conjunction with the exhibition at HKW Berlin (February to April 2016).

An examination of the use of modernism in the twentieth-century battle for US hegemony, through the activities of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom.Parapolitics confronts the contemporary fate of intellectual autonomy and artistic freedom by revisiting the use of modernism in the twentieth-century battle for US hegemony. It builds on a major exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2017-18) that took as its starting point the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF)--an organization covertly funded by the Central Intelligence Agency in order to steer the Left away from its remaining commitment to communism. Paying particular attention to CCF activities in the non-European world during a period of decolonization and the Civil Rights Movement, Parapolitics assembles archival documentation from five continents alongside a selection of historical artworks to explore the context in which artists negotiated the framing and meaning of their work. A rich reference book for future researchers and everybody interested in the legacy of modernism, the publication also presents more than thirty newly commissioned contributions by contemporary artists and scholars.

Ape Culture traces the long cultural and scientific obsession with humanity's closest relatives. In the Western historical representations of modernity, depictions of apes were traditionally used to show the absence of culture. Standing as a liminal figure separating humans and animals, the ape has, since ancient times, played a central role in the narrative of civilisational progress. This book, which appears in conjunction with the exhibition of the same nameseeks, however, to go beyond the mere examination of apes as signifiers of difference. The juxtaposition of artworks with documents taken from popular culture and the history of primatology gives the reader an insight into what the science historian Donna Haraway has termed the primate order -- a hall of mirrors reflecting the scientific and cultural projections that turned the ape from an instrument of humanity's self-definition into an integral element in testing out the possibility of reconstructing human nature. Ape Culture will be shown at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt from 30 April to 6 July 2015.

The liberal capitalist world order that prevailed after 1989 is today in a stage of advanced disintegration. The collapse of this order exposes the illiberal core of its freedoms and forms of ownership shaped by the market: the violent unfreedoms of the dispossessed as well as the willingness of the propertied to use violence. Art, too, reveals itself as the venue of these forces and their exclusions: Through the downfall of liberality, the modern institution of "veranstaltlichte Kunst" ("institutionalized art", Arnold Hauser) and its social legitimacy are also increasingly called into question.Illiberal Arts is a search for forms concerning an artistic "Lebensarbeit" ("life's work", Lu Märten, publicist and art critic, 1879-1970) initiated with international artists, poets and authors. In the cracks of the decaying forms of market accumulation, anti-identitarian, communal horizons burst open, as do collective forms of perception and political spontaneities. The project subjects these to a practical test. For Lu Märten, "a person's whole life's work" was considered artistic; what was artistic didn't always have to become art. Perhaps what became art doesn't necessarily have to remain art either.With contributions by Juliana Spahr; Rosalind C. Morris; Aristilde Paz Justine Kirby;Övül Ö. Durmusoglu; Ana Teixeira Pinto; Simone White; Frank Engster, Lisa Jechske and MYSTI, Jenny Nachtigall, Fumi Okiji,Larne Abse Gogarty, arán Finlayson, Danny Hayward, Em Hedditch, Marina Vishmidt, Danny Hayward a.o.

Aby Warburgs berühmter Vortrag zum Schlangenritual der Hopi in Arizona ist einer der meistkommentierten kunstwissenschaftlichen Texte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Doch über seine Quelle, das Schlangenritual der Hopi und dessen Geschichte, ist wenig bekannt - zumal in Europa. Eine Art Weltkrieg widmet sich der auch von Aby Warburg selbst weitgehend ignorierten politischen Geschichte der Bilder dieses Rituals, an deren Verbreitung er teilhatte. Der Band zeigt auf, dass Warburgs Kunstgeschichte, seine Skizzen zu einer inneren Geschichte der europäischen Psyche, zusammen mit ihrem äußeren Pendant gelesen werden müssen: der Geschichte von Kolonisierung, Krieg und kulturellen Verflechtungen.--Aby Warburg's famous lecture on the Hopi snake ritual in Arizona is one of the most commented art history transcripts of the 20th century. But while Warburg's essay is firmly anchored in the canon of art history, to a wider public-especially in Europe-little is known about its source, the snake ritual and its history. A Kind of World War is dedicated to what Aby Warburg largely ignored himself: that not only the ritual, but also the images of the ritual-to whose global distribution Warburg contributed-have a political history. The volume seeks to demonstrate that Warburg's art history, insofar it outlines an internal history of the European psyche, must be read in conjunction with its external counterpart, the history of colonization, war and cultural entanglement.

PL