The world today faces overwhelming ecological and social problems and the concern for material existence on earth is more pressing than ever. Making Matters spells out various roles that visual artists and designers play facing these issues. Collective action is necessary and inevitable.

Collective action often changes the artist’s identity and working habits: from individuality and autonomy to collectivity and collaboration, both locally and globally. These developments have given rise to ...

In cities around the world a new urban condition is spreading

rapidly: an ever-increasing push for ‘perfection’, efficiency

and control and the active eradication of any

aberration, friction or alternative. The smooth city with its

sanitized spaces and new technologies compresses urban

life into a seamless experience. While the demand for safe,

clean, and well-functioning urban environments is understandable,

the rise of the smooth city undermines the democratic

nature and emancipatory po...

Over the last few decades the term ‘bootlegging’—a practice once relegated to smugglers and copyright infringers—has become understood as a creative act. Debates about homage, appropriation, and theft that are common in the art world, are now being held in the spheres of corporate branding, social media, and the creative industry as a whole. Today, bootlegging has become fetishized as an aesthetic in and of itself, influencing everything from underground record labels to DIY T-shirts,...

Curating exhibitions and ‘art writing’ are closely related: both activities construct a meaningful narrative about artefacts and artists, both interact with a public, viewers/readers; both make space for the experience of art objects. For their work, curators and art writers tap the primary source: the living artist, their work and world. Both cherish a proximity to the maker, for it allows them to delve into artistic processes, consider things in a state of becoming. An essential tool fo...

Imaginative Bodies contains a series of in-depth conversations with dancers and choreographers, composers, visual artists, Hip Hop artists, dramaturgs, a lighting designer and a puppeteer. The overall theme is defined by the body, both in relation to the place it takes in the artist's work, and in relation to wider debates on the body in philosophy, science, medicine, anthropology, and the arts. Depending on the affinities of the artist, a more specific theme has been defined for each dialogu...

Capitalism could not exist without the coins, banknotes, documents, information graphics, interfaces, branding, and advertisements made by graphic designers. Even anti-consumerist strategies such as social design and speculative design are appropriated to serve economic growth. It seems design is locked in a cycle of exploitation and extraction, furthering inequality and environmental collapse. CAPS LOCK uses clear language and visual examples to show how graphic design and capitalism are ine...

Geert Lovink is een Nederlandse mediatheoreticus, internetcriticus en auteur van Uncanny Networks (2002), Dark Fiber (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016), Organization after Social Media (met Ned Rossiter, 2018) en Sad by Design (2019). In 2004 richtte hij het Institute of Network Cultures op aan de Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA). Dit centrum organiseert conferenties, publicaties en onderzoeksnetwerken zoals Video ...

Sculpture as a specific medium is rarely investigated within a deeply cultural, philosophical context, nor within visual art itself. Whilst discussions about installation art, performance art, or other 3D art forms are widespread, the discourse on sculpture seems to be stuck in historical, material, or thematic frameworks. This is a loss for our understanding of art in general, and of sculpture in particular. In order to assess contemporary art practices, one should have a better understandin...

Kunst is een vorm van denken, een bijzondere bron van kennis. In deze publicatie wordt de lezer ingeleid in de methode van Art-Based Learning: een benadering die de toeschouwer in staat stelt om met kunstwerken in dialoog te gaan.

Aan de hand van drie triptieken laat de auteur zien hoe kunstwerken werken als “sprekende objecten”. Deze studie is bedoeld voor studenten en docenten theologie, filosofie en antropologie, theater- en filmwetenschap, literatuurwetenschappen en (kunst)geschiedeni...

In The Aesthetics of Ambiguity: Understanding and Addressing Monoculture betogen Pascal Gielen en Nav Haq dat multiculturalisme paradoxaal genoeg gebaseerd is op monocultureel denken. De publicatie verkent deze paradox door monocultuur in verschillende hedendaagse contexten te onderzoeken. Het boek wil monocultuur analyseren met behulp van een veelzijdige benadering, door historische, sociale, culturele en ideologische perspectieven samen te brengen. Kunst kan daarbij zowel dienen als middel ...