The Object - 9780262525763

Artists increasingly refer to "post-object-based" work while theoristsengage with material artifacts in culture. A focus on "object-based" learning treatsobjects as vectors for dialogue across disciplines. Virtual imaging enables the object to beabstracted or circumvented, while immaterial forms of labor challenge materialist theories. Thisanthology surveys such reappraisals of what constitutes the "objectness" of production,with art as its focus.

Among the topics it examines are the relation of theobject to subjectivity; distinctions between objects and things; the significance of the object'stransition from inert mass to tool or artifact; and the meanings of the everyday in the foundobject, repetition in the replicated or multiple object, loss in the absent object, and abjection inthe formless or degraded object. It also explores artistic positions that are anti-object; theoriesof the experimental, liminal or mental object; and the role of objects in performance. The objectbecomes a prism through which to reread contemporary art and better understand its recent past.

Artists surveyed includeGeorges Adéagbo, Art in Ruins, IainBaxter, Louise Bourgeois, Pavel Büchler, Lygia Clark, Claude Closky, Brian Collier, Jimmie Durham,Fischli & Weiss, Luca Frei, Meschac Gaba, Isa Genzken, Gruppe Geflecht, Eva Hesse, Mike Kelley,John Latham, Antje Majewski, Gustav Metzger, Cady Noland, Gabriel Orozco, Adrian Piper, FalkePisano, Eva Rothschild, Aura Satz, Kenneth Snelson, Hito Steyerl, Josef Strau, Alina Szapocznikow,Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Erwin Wurm

Writers include Homi K. Bhabha,Jack Burnham, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Lynne Cooke, Gillo Dorfles, Jean Fisher, Ferreira Gullar, CharlesHarrison, Paulo Herkenhoff, Julia Kristeva, Bruno Latour, Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger, Jean-FrançoisLyotard, Lev Manovich, Ursula Meyer, Bruno Munari, Georges Perec, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, DieterRoelstraete, Howard Singerman, Nancy Spector, Marcus Steinweg, Anne Wagner, Gérard Wajcman, Slavoj?i?ek