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The Architecture of Disaster
The Architecture of Disaster

Ines Weizman, Eyal Weizman

Before & After

History is increasingly presented as a series of catastrophes. The most common mode of this presentation is the before-and-after image—a juxtaposition of two photographs of the same place, at different times, before and after an event has taken its toll. Buildings seen intact in a “before” photograph have been destroyed in the one “after.” Neighborhoods bustling with activity in one image are in ruins or under a layer of foulwater in the next. Deforestations, contaminations, melting icebergs and drying rivers...
  • photography
  • History of photography
  • forensic science
  • war
  • photographic images
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Mama Say Make I Dey Go, She Dey My Back

Jelili Atiku, Damian Christinger

Mama Say Make I Dey Go, She Dey My Back

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  • ritual
  • ceremony
  • body
  • spiritism
  • colonialism
  • feminism
  • performance
  • Africa

 

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Current Texts

Eric Baudelaire

A for Anomie

A for Anomie

The idea that terrorism and other forms of political violence are directly related to strains caused by strongly held grievances has been one of the most common explanations to date and can be traced to a diverse set of theoretical concepts including relative deprivation, social disorganization, breakdown, tension, and anomie. Merton (1938) identifies anomie as a cultural condition of frustration, in which values regarding goals and how to achieve them conflict with limitations on the means of achievement.

Gary LaFree and Laura Dugan, “Research on Terrorism and Countering Terrorism”, Crime and Justice, Vol. 38, No. 1, 2009.

 

B for Block or Blocked

If terrorism in each of its expressions can be considered an indicator of the existence of a political block (of an impossibility of reacting if one wishes to react differently), this influences its real ability to modify the situation. Terrorism has been historically more successful when it was not...

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Kerstin Stakemeier

Crisis and Materiality in Art

Against all earlier hopes, the survival of mankind in and after the modern industrial age has turned out not to be automatable. On the contrary, it entirely depends on the continued active restoration of its material living conditions. Gilbert Simondon describes this connection between humans and their machines in the 1950s in On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects as a tragically truncated, restricted, and limiting way of living for both because, “man’s alienation vis à vis the machine...
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  • anthropology
  • material aesthetics
  • thing/thingness
  • materiality
  • materialist turn
Current Texts
Enjoy!

Michael Heitz

Enjoy!

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  • sexuality
  • Video art
  • China
  • motherhood
  • contemporary art