Main entry:

Demos, T. J., author.

Title & Author:

Beyond the world's end : arts of living at the crossing / T. J. Demos.

Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2020.
©2020

Description:

viii, 260 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages [199]-248) and index.
Introduction: The World's End, and Beyond -- Feeding the Ghost : John Akomfrah's Vertigo Sea -- Blackout : The Necropolitics of Extraction -- The Visual Politics of Climate Refugees -- Gaming the Environment : On the Media Ecology of Public Studio -- Animal Cosmopolitics : The Art of Gustafsson & Haapoja -- To Save a World : Geoengineering, Conflictual Futurisms, and the Unthinkable -- The Great Transition : The Arts and Radical System Change.

Summary:

"In BEYOND THE WORLD'S END art theorist and critic TJ Demos argues for an intersectional approach to issues of environmental and social justice, where questions of indigeneity, race, and settler colonialism are thought together with those of ecology. He advocates for what he calls creative ecologies, and he explores how artists are engaging with climate change, racial capitalism, and neoliberalism. He shows how these art practices need to stretch beyond the conventionally recognized bounds of artwork. Throughout, he considers the visual politics of climate change and a range of artistic practices that provide compelling radical propositions for changing our current climate and cultural predicaments. Chapter 1 considers the visual politics of climate refuges through an analysis of John Akomfrah's film Vertigo Sea. Chapter 2 is about contemporary extraction: its visual cultures as well as the politics and aesthetics of emergent forms of resistance today. The responses of migration to a network of forces such as economic conditions, social factors, and governmental legal frameworks are outlined in chapter 3. Chapter 4 describes ecomedia, exploring the hidden potentials of environmental media and political aesthetics. In chapter 5 Demos discusses a theatrical enactment comprising a 90-minute courtroom performance designed by Laura Gustafsson and Terike Jaapoja to address the question of the legal rights of nonhumans. The trial constructs an imaginary juridical system that grants animals legal standing, thereby questioning why animals have no representation or intrinsic value in real courts. Chapter 6 considers two ideologies that speak to the conditions of the Anthropocene. The first is a futurist vision of the Anthropocene where humans are able to use climate engineering to stabilize temperatures, and the second is Afrofuturism and the imagining of a co-existence of equality, love, and peace. Both future modelings offer an expedient comparison and startling contrast between the current techno-scientific rationality of climate-change response and the socio-environmental justice concerns around racial capitalism. The book ends with a chapter on Trumpism and the state of emergency that the world finds itself in with the rise of post-democratic authoritarian capitalism while fossil-fueled climate change continues to affect our world. Demos ends by concluding that, in order to enact a paradigm shift in fundamental values, it will take nothing less than the building of entirely different cultures, empowering diverse allies to be participants in transforming the world as we know it. This book will be of interest to artists and art critics as well as scholars in art, environmental humanities, globalization, and cultural studies"-- Provided by publisher.

ISBN:

9781478008668 hardcover
1478008660 hardcover
9781478009573 paperback
1478009578 paperback
electronic book
9781478012252

Subject:

Ecology in art.
Human ecology in art.
Social justice in art.
Art and society.
Art Political aspects.
Écologie humaine dans l'art.
Justice sociale dans l'art.
Art et société.
Art Aspect politique.
political art.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 308867
Call No.: BIB 254190
Status: Available