Anselm Franke Book order

On the image politics of Aby Warburg's legendary lecture on the Hopi snake ritual Aby Warburg's famous lecture on the Hopi snake ritual in Arizona is one of the most commented-upon art history documents of the 20th century. But while Warburg's essay is firmly anchored in the canon of art history, to a wider public--especially in Europe--little is known about its source, the snake ritual and its history. A Kind of World Waraddresses what Warburg largely ignored himself: that not only the ritual, but also the images of the ritual--to whose global distribution Warburg contributed--have a political history. The volume seeks to demonstrate that Warburg's art history, insofar as it outlines an internal history of the European psyche, must be read in conjunction with its external counterpart, the history of colonization, war and cultural entanglement.

Artists and writers explore Sylvia Wynter's postcolonial dismantling of origin myths and cosmologies According to the influential Jamaican writer and cultural theorist Sylvia Wynter, "we humans cannot pre-exist our origin myths any more than a bee can pre-exist its beehive." Drawing inspiration from her seminal essays "The Ceremony Must Be Found" (1984) and "The Ceremony Found" (2015), Ceremonydraws on Wynter's thinking to suggest that "modernity," contrary to its own self-image as rational and secular, is also determined by origin myths that emerged through the "mutations" of Christian cosmology after the dawn of capitalism in the Middle Ages. With over 25 contributions and commentaries on Wynter's propositions from artists and writers, this publication constitutes a critical reference point for those seeking to construct and envisage a "counter-cosmogony" to the dispossession, slavery and extractivism of modernity that so endanger planetary life for humankind.

At the core of this exploration is the question of art's functions across time—present, past, and future. Modernist views sought to establish art's autonomy, sidelining its social and religious roles. However, this autonomy has been critiqued as potentially serving bourgeois capitalism, particularly by anti-modernist voices targeting the avant-garde and Surrealism. The aim during the tumultuous years from the 1920s to the 1940s was to restore a lost functionality of art. The accompanying publication delves into the strategies employed in this endeavor, such as the surrealist Primitivism and the excavation of humanity's deep past, as envisioned by Carl Einstein, who proposed a hallucinatory retro-utopia termed “Neolithic Childhood.” The volume includes essays from curators and academics, primary texts by Einstein, and comprehensive documentation of the exhibition, featuring lists of works, texts, images, and installation views. A glossary at the center elaborates on Einstein's theoretical vocabulary and related terms like Autonomy, Formalism, and Primitivisms. Contributions come from various scholars, and the book showcases artworks by notable artists, including Jean (Hans) Arp, Max Ernst, and Paul Klee, among others.

Jenseits immer neuer Enthüllungen über die Massenüberwachung der Geheimdienste bestimmt „Big Data“ die öffentliche Diskussion über das zunehmend gläserne Konsum-Individuum. Dem Versprechen von Teilhabe stehen neue Formen der Kontrolle und Modellierung von sozialem Verhalten in bisher ungekanntem Maße gegenüber. Unzählige Sensoren digitaler und technologischer Infrastrukturen verbinden Staat, Wirtschaft, Individuum und Technologie zu immer komplexer werdenden „nervösen Systemen“. Diese Nervosität offenbart sich insbesondere dort, wo die Verhältnisse von Macht und Teilhabe ins Blickfeld geraten, also entlang der „sozialen Frage“. Die Publikation versammelt eine Auswahl zeitgenössischer Kunst, ergänzt um essayistische Beiträge von Expertinnen, Theoretikern und Forscherinnen, die u. a. historische Dokumente präsentieren. Nervous Systems erschien zur Ausstellung im HKW Berlin (Februar bis April 2016).

Taowu, a mythological Chinese monster symbolizing ignorance, has been revived recently by historians and writers to illustrate the violent arc of Chinese utopian modernity. Taowu brings unheard of evils and sufferings to man, undermining humanity in favor of financial gain. This publication, generated by a monumental exhibition at the 2012 Taipei Biennial, and curated by noted cultural critic Anselm Franke, uses this mythological Chinese figure as the starting point for a series of essays addressing the current crisis. Modern Monsters functions as a conceptual and theoretical reader in conversation with the exhibition and deeply controversial subject. Comprised of 23 essays the book includes original contributions from the curators and editors Anselm Franke and Brian Kuan Wood along with Taiwanese literary historian David Der-Wei Wang. Other contributors are Nabil Ahmed, Eric Baudelaire, Chen Chieh-Jen Li, Hu Fang, Mark Fisher, James T. Hong, Henri Lefebvre, Masao Matsuda, Ian Svenonius, Sophie Wahnich, and many more

The publication serves as an independent supplement, upate and extension to the originale Territories (2003) book. It brings together architects and artists in a publication about politics, architecture and geography. A number of projects are presented dealing with the occupation, control and defence of space, bearing witness to the increasing fragmentation and militarization of the global political landscape. Diese Publikation ist eine eigenständige und unabhängige Ergänzung zum ursprünglichen, 2003 erschienenen Territories Buch.