OHP in The House That Heals The Soul exhibition at Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow

Some images from the The House That Heals The Soul exhibition, held over the summer at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow.

Open Humanities Press was included in the form of a usb stick dead drop.

The House That Heals The Soul - Nick Thurston, Sean Dockray and Benjamin Forster, Publication Studio Glasgow, OOMK, The Book Lovers, The Serving Library, Temporary Services Library, Emily Jacir, Mybookcase, Curandi-Katz and Beatrice Catanzaro.

This summer’s exhibition at CCA (22 July– 3 September) focuses on the practice of publishing, and the political and social status of the Library. Programmed in collaboration with artist Nick Thurston, CCA’s exhibition spaces will be opened up to house a selection of library and self-publishing resources and artworks, looking at the radical potential of library collections and collecting.

Public libraries have become one of the last remaining spaces where people can gather without expectation or requirement. With the future and financing of libraries and library buildings becoming increasingly precarious, this exhibition aims to explore the radical potential of libraries as sites of resistance, shelter, sharing and knowledge exchange. The show will support a dialogue around the importance of librarians as interlocutor and curator, as well as giving access to CCA’s spaces for reading and viewing of work.

Alongside library resources, the exhibition will include a series of artworks examining relationships to books, access to libraries and the technologies of reading. Digital projects such as aaaaarg.fail will also have a presence in the space, and there will be series of talks by artists and radical librarians throughout the show exploring alternative sites for knowledge sharing.

Publication Studio Glasgow will also move into the gallery spaces as an open-source resource for self-publishing. CCA and the Publication Studio partners will run a series of workshops and inductions allowing any member of the public to design, print and bind their own book edition.

This exhibition marks the beginning of a series of summer exhibitions in CCA’s main galleries that open the rooms up as spaces for meeting and exchange, providing resources and facilities for more autonomous activity.

Examples of activities include:

Sharing of books

Film screenings

Workshops

Open discussion groups, debates and reading groups

Public meetings of organisations/agencies

Writing sessions

Performances

#postARTandSCIENCE symposium at the Wellcome Collection

#postARTandSCIENCE is a one day symposium on Friday 22 September 2017, from 9.30am to 5.30pm

Venue: Henry Wellcome Auditorium, Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE

Over the last 30 years 'art+science' has grown from a niche interest to a legitimate field of inquiry and experimentation, producing many exciting projects, interdisciplinary collaborations and lively debates across various academic and artistic institutions. At the same time, concerns have been raised that aesthetically engaging art is all too frequently used to illuminate a scientific idea and, in this way, help scientists communicate with a wider audience. Even some of the more collaborative projects between artists and sciences maintain the distinction between the two fields, which temporarily come together in various funded projects. So, is it time to move on from 'art+science'?

#postARTandSCIENCE takes as its main theme thinking beyond 'art+science' -- especially in the sense in which this pairing is conventionally understood. Are we satisfied with the way 'art+science' has operated to date, and, if not, what should come after it? Can art change what we understand by science? Can science itself be considered a form of art? Should the relation be extended to take in other methods and approaches, such as those associated with engineering, geography, anthropology, literature, philosophy or media? Or does #postARTandSCIENCE call for an a-disciplinary approach? 

Speakers include:

Martin Kemp FBA, Emeritus Professor in the History of Art, Trinity College, Oxford University. THE SCI-ART BUSINESS. BACK TO BASICS

Prof. Joanna Zylinska, Professor of New Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London. Biomediations, or does art+science have a blind spot?

Prof Gary Hall, Professor of Media and Performing Arts, Coventry University. The Inhumanist Manifesto: Who's Afraid of the Subject of Art+Science?

Prof Stelarc, Performance Artist and Distinguished Research Fellow, School of Design and Art, Curtin University. EXCESS / EMPTINESS / INDIFFERENCE – FROM NANO SCALE TO TELEMATIC SPACE.

Dr Nina Sellars, Artist in Residence, SymbioticA, The University of Western Australia, funded by the Australia Council. 'A Posthumanist Approach to Art+Science'.

Prof William Latham, Computing Department Goldsmiths, University of London. Mutator VR.

Euan Lawson, Partner at Simkins LLP. Copyright for Collaborators – Law and Practice.

Prof Neal White, Professor of Art/Science, Director - CREAM at University of Westminster. 'The Potential of Destruction in Art & Science'.

Dr Daniel Glaser, Director, Science Gallery London. Genuine jeopardy: how can young people help shape a high-quality arts programme in London’s newest science–art space?

Jen Wong, Director Guerilla Science. The Revolution will not be institutionalised.

Moderated by Luke Robert Mason, Director of Virtual Futures.

Curated by Robert Devcic, Founder & Director of GV Art London.

email info@gvart.co.uk to request an invitation

The Digital University in a Neoliberal Age symposium

The Inhumanist Manifesto

'The Inhumanist Manifesto' is taken from the forthcoming inaugural 'manifesto' issue of Media Theory. It is currently available as a blog post on the Media Theory site here.

How I Came To Write A Manifesto

In the spring of 2017 I was invited to help launch a new open access journal, Media Theory. The idea was that a number of authors would each produce a manifesto as to why such a journal was necessary and what they would like to see it do.

I responded by acknowledging that, although the manifesto mode of political writing is associated with some of the themes and topics I’ve engaged with the most--posthumanism, piracy, Marxism, open access, the commons--I was nevertheless hesitant to take up such an invitation. I’m not particularly interested in setting agendas or laying out policies with my work. Nor do I wish to get involved in debates. Yet the reason I hesitated was not just because I’m reluctant to promote new ideas with prescriptive notions about how to carry out those changes I believe need to be made. Nor was my wavering over the writing of a manifesto simply due to a concern that the power of this particular textual form of communication may have waned as a result of too much unthinking repetition, and an associated preference on my part for less obvious ways of acting. Having launched an open access theory journal myself a number of years ago--Culture Machine--I was also aware there was danger of coming across as if I was telling those behind Media Theory what they should do with their journal. 

Sometimes the most responsible decision anyone who has attained even a modest position of authority can make is to step aside after a while. Of course, it can be difficult to relinquish what are often hard-won roles. Neverthless it’s important to do so, regardless of any success, in order to create opportunities and openings for others. Which is why my colleagues and I decided to celebrate Culture Machine’s 15th anniversary by passing editorial control over the journal’s future direction on to Gabriela Méndez Cota and Rafico Ruiz, two early career theorists who are located in Mexico and Canada respectively. And I would no more consider telling the editors of Media Theory what to do with their journal than I would Gabriela and Rafico with Culture Machine.

Still, I wanted to take the opportunity to offer those involed in launching this new open access theory journal my continuing support. So if a manifesto can be understood as a public declaration of the views, motives or intentions of the issuer, I thought I would take the risk of replying to their invitation by briefly making obvious the theory that lies behind the development of Culture Machine and some of the other projects with which I’m involved. I would then leave it to them to decide how much, if anything, of this was relevant as far as their intentions for Media Theory were concerned.  

The rest of 'The Inhumanist Manifesto' is available on the Media Theory site here. 

Three new OHP books from: Brian Massumi; Steven Connor; and Érik Bordeleau, Toni Pape, Ronald Rose-Antoinette and Adam Szymanski

We are pleased to announce the release this month of two new titles in Open Humanities Press’ Immediations series:

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Brian Massumi's The Principle of Unrest explores the contemporary implications of an activist philosophy, pivoting on the issue of movement. Movement is understood not simply in spatial terms but as qualitative transformation: becoming, emergence, event.

Available for free download at:

http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/the-principle-of-unrest/

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Nocturnal Fabulations/Fabulations nocturnes by Érik Bordeleau, Toni Pape, Ronald Rose-Antoinette and Adam Szymanski with an Introduction by Erin Manning.

This collective, bi-lingual project is animated by a shared curiosity in the pragmatics of fabulation and its speculative gesture of bringing forth a people to come. In an encounter with Apichatpong’s cinematic dreamscape, the concepts of ecology, vitality and opacity emerge to articulate an ethos of fabulation that deframes experience, recomposes subjectivity and unfixes time.Available for free download at:

English: http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/nocturnal-fabulations/

 French: http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/fabulations-nocturnes/

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We are also pleased to announce the latest book in the Technographies series:

Steven Connor's Dream Machines

Dream Machines is a history of imaginary machines and the ways in which machines come to be imagined. It considers seven different kinds of speculative, projected or impossible machines: machines for teleportation, dream-production, sexual pleasure and medical treatment and cure, along with ‘influencing machines’, invisibility machines and perpetual motion machines.

“This is an engaging and imaginative exploration of various forms of writing, thinking, and fantasizing about dream machines, an endlessly fertile topic probed here from just about every possible angle … a major intervention into current understandings of technology, literature, and identity.” 

Matthew Rubery – Queen Mary University of London

“… a deeply original contribution to the history and philosophy of technology and the cultural history of the imagination …”Laura Salisbury – University of Exeter

Available for free download at:

http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/dream-machines/

With our best wishes,

Sigi, David, Gary