Virilio, sempre

NEW TEXTBOOK FROM BERG


Art as Far as the Eye Can See
By Paul Virilio
Translated by Julie Rose

“An exceptional, even visionary mind.”
- Leonardo Digital Reviews

“Virilio is an impressive commentator on the conditioning power of the mass media... He flits from image to image like a poet and usually builds to a profound climax.”
- The Guardian




Art as Far as the Eye Can See puts art back where it matters – at the centre of politics.

Art used to be an engagement between artist and materials. But, in our new media world, art has changed; its very materials have changed and have become technologized.

This change reflects a broader social shift. Speed and politics – what Virilio defined as the key characteristics of the twentieth century – have been transformed in the twenty-first century to speed and mass culture. And the defining characteristic of mass culture today is panic.

This induced panic relies on a new, all-seeing technology. And the first casualty of this is the human response. What we are losing is the very human 'art of seeing', one individual's engagement with another or with an event, be that political or artistic. What we are losing is our sense of the aesthetic.

Virilio argues that, in the twenty-first century, the new battleground will be art as light versus art as matter.



Source: www.bergpublishers.com