Seeing Power
  • Published: 15 February 2012
  • ISBN: 9781612190440
  • Imprint: Melville House
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $65.00

Seeing Power

Art and Activism in the Twenty-first Century

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A work of criticism that will find a wide audience in the art world: speaks to the intersections of art and activism, a seldom discussed but popular topic

In our chaotic world of co-opted imagery, does art still have power?

A fog of images and information permeates the world nowadays: from advertising, television, radio, and film to the glut produced by the new economy and the rise of social media . . . where even our friends suddenly seem to be selling us the ultimate product: themselves.

Here, Nato Thompson—one of the country’s most celebrated young curators and critics—investigates what this deluge means for those dedicated to socially engaged art and activism. How can anyone find a voice and make change in a world flooded with such pseudo-art? How are we supposed to discern what’s true in the product emanating from the ceaseless machine of consumer capitalism, a machine that appropriates from art history, and now from the methods of grassroots political organizing and even social networking?

Thompson’s invigorating answers to those questions highlights the work of some of the most innovative and interesting artists and activists working today, as well as institutions that empower their communities to see power and reimagine it. From cooperative housing to anarchist infoshops to alternative art venues, Seeing Power reveals ways that art today can and does inspire innovation and dramatic transformation . . . perhaps as never before.
  • Published: 15 February 2012
  • ISBN: 9781612190440
  • Imprint: Melville House
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $65.00
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Praise for Seeing Power

Praise for Experimental Geography

"Living in cities, we need a new way to think about how we move and what we notice... This strange, exciting book offers just that--a new way to notice public space. It is the brainchild of Nato Thompson: the results of his fascinations with urban planning post-Katrina, abandoned or unnoticed urban landscapes and public art."
--Susan Salter Reynold, Los Angeles Times

"Another step in the ongoing quest for social energies not yet recognized as art, Experimental Geography brings together a significant group of artists and collectives looking seriously at land use--urban and rural, local and global. Leaving behind the earthworks of the past, and reviving the line-blurring process that defined art and lived experience in 1960s conceptualism, much of this work is not about geography but exist within geography, exploring the politics and infrastructures that can either change or stall the world."
--Lucy Lippard, author of The Lure of the Local

"What could be more delightful--and unsettling--than turning loose a group of contemporary surrealists, disguised as vagabonds and artists, in the ripe fields of the hyper-real? Experimental Geography isn't about space; it is about terminal strangeness."
--Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear and City of Quartz