Yvonne Spielmann Book order

Indonesian art entered the global contemporary art world of independent curators, art fairs and biennales in the 1990s. By the mid-2000s, Indonesian works were well-established on the Asian secondary art market, achieving record-breaking prices at auction houses in Singapore and Hong Kong. This comprehensive overview introduces Indonesian contemporary art in a fresh and stimulating manner, demonstrating how contemporary art breaks from colonial and post-colonial power structures, and grapples with issues of identity and nation-building in Indonesia. Across different media, in performance and installation, it amalgamates ethnic, cultural and religious references in its visuals, and confidently brings together the traditional (batik, woodcut, dance, Javanese shadow puppet theatre) with the contemporary (comics and manga, graffiti, advertising, pop culture). Spielmann's 'Contemporary Indonesian Art' surveys the key artists, curators, institutions and collectors in the local art scene, and looks at the significance of Indonesian art in the Asian context. Through this book, originally published in German, Spielmann stakes a claim for global relevance of Indonesian art.0Translated from German by Mitch Cohen.

This exploration delves into the tensions between East and West, as well as digital and analog, within Japanese new-media art. Originating from Yvonne Spielmann's visits to Japan in 2005-2006 and 2009, the work investigates the technological and aesthetic roots of this art form, known for its pioneering interactive and virtual media applications in the 1990s. Spielmann identifies a crucial hybridity in Japan's media culture, characterized by internal hybridity—a blend of digital and analog elements alongside a non-Western modernity—and external hybridity, shaped by the international exchange of aesthetic concepts. She highlights Japan's innovative technological landscape, where developers, engineers, and artists collaborate, and traces the nation’s emphasis on precision and functionality back to a poetics of unobtrusiveness and detail. The book examines artists like Masaki Fujihata, whose work embodies formal and thematic hybridity; Seiko Mikami and Sota Ichikawa, who create devices for enhanced human-machine interaction; Toshio Iwai, who merges traditional media with computing; and Tatsuo Miyajima, whose LED art is rooted in Buddhist philosophy. Spielmann posits hybridity as a valuable aesthetic, potentially defining global culture, as it encourages the exploration of complex, contradictory elements through dynamic and fluid characteristics.

An argument that video is not merely an intermediate stage between analog and digital but a medium in its own right; traces the theoretical genealogy of video and examines the different concepts of video seen in works by Vito Acconci, Ulrike Rosenbach, Steina and Woody Vasulka, and others.