Angela Dimitrakaki - Böcker

Is gender implicated in how art does its work in the world created by global capital? Is a global imperative exclusive to capital’s planetary expansion or also witnessed in oppositional practices in art and curating? And what is new in the gendered paradigms of art after the fall of the Berlin Wall? Angela Dimitrakaki addresses these questions in an insightful and highly original analysis of travel as artistic labour, the sexualisation of migration as a relationship between Eastern and Western Europe, the rise of female collectives, masculinity and globalisation’s ‘bad boys’, the emergence of a gendered economic subject that has dethroned postmodernism, and the need for a renewed materialist feminism.This is a theoretically astute overview of developments in art and its contexts since the 1990s and the first study to attempt a critical refocusing of feminist politics in art history in the wake of globalisation. It will be essential reading in art history, gender, feminist and globalisation studies, curatorial theory, cultural studies and beyond.

'An intellectual tour-de-force' - Griselda Pollock, Professor Emerita, University of LeedsFeminism. Art. Capitalism. calls for a revolutionary rethinking of the feminist struggle and its relation to art.Championing Marxist feminism and focusing on the layers of capitalist hegemony, the book considers the exploitation of enthusiasm in art’s promise of a self-determined subject, the ideological capture of feminism, modernity’s attachment to technology (and its magic), the historical context and impact of postmodernism, and the question of class and social reproduction.Provocative and uncompromising, Feminism. Art. Capitalism. offers an indispensable guide for art history, theory, and practice – inviting readers to confront what claiming art and feminism as sites of resistance actually entails.

What happened in art following the consolidation of capitalist globalisation after 1989? Drawing on work in art history, curating, critical theory, political economy and sociology, essays in Economy: Art, Production and the Subject in the 21st Century frame and substantiate the increasing attendance to economic relations as a defining trend in contemporary art’s history and one that brought to an end the hegemony of the cultural subject encountered in postmodern discourse.Contributions include reflections on art in its relation to property as well as to speculation and finance, immaterial labour and the avant-garde, the lessons of the past in pursuing an aesthetics of the economy, the ethics of care and the role of the art document, queer politics and class, the new feminist critique of economic subjects, migration, precarity and empowerment, the ambivalence of the commons, and a range of perspectives on the possibility of opposition, in the art world and beyond, to the biopolitical rule of global capital as the arbiter of human relations.Building on, extending and querying the curatorial project ECONOMY (Edinburgh and Glasgow 2013), the book puts forward a proposition that cuts across a number of ‘turns’ in the art of the past two decades, including socially engaged practices, seeking to connect localised approaches with the broader organisation of production and the unprecedented apparentness of the economy in the passage from the 20th to the 21st century.Contributors: Massimo de Angelis, Angela Dimitrakaki, Melanie Gilligan, Kirsten Lloyd, Renate Lorenz, Dimitris Papadopoulos & Vassilis Tsianos, Andrea Phillips, John Roberts, Alberto Toscano, Gregory Sholette, Marina Vishmidt.Editors: Angela Dimitrakaki is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of EdinburghKirsten Lloyd is Teaching Fellow in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh and Associate Curator at Stills, Edinburgh

What happens to art when feminism grips the curatorial imagination? How do sexual politics become realised as exhibits? Is the struggle against gender discrimination compatible with the aspirations of museums led by market values? Beginning with the feminist critique of the art exhibition in the 1970s and concluding with reflections on intersectional curating and globalisation after 2000, this pioneering collection offers an alternative narrative of feminism’s impact on art. The essays provide rigorous accounts of developments in Scandinavia, Eastern and Southern Europe as well as the UK and US, framed by an introduction which offers a politically engaging navigation of historical and current positions. Delivered through essays, memoirs and interviews, discussion highlights include the Tate Modern hang, relational aesthetics, the global exhibition, feminism and technology in the museum, the rise of curatorial collectivism, and insights into major exhibitions such as Gender Check on Eastern Europe. Bringing together two generations of curators, artists and historians to rethink distinct and unresolved moments in the feminist re-modelling of art contexts, this volume dares to ask: is there a history of feminist art or one of feminist presentations of artworks?Contributors include Deborah Cherry, Jo Anna Isaak, Malin Hedlin Hayden, Lubaina Himid, Amelia Jones, Kati Kivimaa, Alexandra Kokoli, Kuratorisk Aktion, Suzana Milevska, Suzanne Lacy, Lucy Lippard, Sue Malvern, Nancy Proctor, Bojana Pejić, Helena Reckitt, Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, Jeannine Tang and Catherine Wood.

Is gender implicated in how art does its work in the world created by global capital? Is a global imperative exclusive to capital’s planetary expansion or also witnessed in oppositional practices in art and curating? And what is new in the gendered paradigms of art after the fall of the Berlin Wall? Angela Dimitrakaki addresses these questions in an insightful and highly original analysis of travel as artistic labour, the sexualisation of migration as a relationship between Eastern and Western Europe, the rise of female collectives, masculinity and globalisation’s ‘bad boys’, the emergence of a gendered economic subject that has dethroned postmodernism, and the need for a renewed materialist feminism.Now available in paperback, this is a theoretically astute overview of developments in art and its contexts since the 1990s and the first study to attempt a critical refocusing of feminist politics in art history in the wake of globalisation. It will be essential reading in art history, gender, feminist and globalisation studies, curatorial theory, cultural studies and beyond.

What happened in art following the consolidation of capitalist globalisation after 1989? Drawing on work in art history, curating, critical theory, political economy and sociology, essays in Economy: Art, Production and the Subject in the 21st Century frame and substantiate the increasing attendance to economic relations as a defining trend in contemporary art’s history and one that brought to an end the hegemony of the cultural subject encountered in postmodern discourse.Contributions include reflections on art in its relation to property as well as to speculation and finance, immaterial labour and the avant-garde, the lessons of the past in pursuing an aesthetics of the economy, the ethics of care and the role of the art document, queer politics and class, the new feminist critique of economic subjects, migration, precarity and empowerment, the ambivalence of the commons, and a range of perspectives on the possibility of opposition, in the art world and beyond, to the biopolitical rule of global capital as the arbiter of human relations.Building on, extending and querying the curatorial project ECONOMY (Edinburgh and Glasgow 2013), the book puts forward a proposition that cuts across a number of ‘turns’ in the art of the past two decades, including socially engaged practices, seeking to connect localised approaches with the broader organisation of production and the unprecedented apparentness of the economy in the passage from the 20th to the 21st century.Contributors: Massimo de Angelis, Angela Dimitrakaki, Melanie Gilligan, Kirsten Lloyd, Renate Lorenz, Dimitris Papadopoulos & Vassilis Tsianos, Andrea Phillips, John Roberts, Alberto Toscano, Gregory Sholette, Marina Vishmidt.Editors: Angela Dimitrakaki is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of EdinburghKirsten Lloyd is Teaching Fellow in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh and Associate Curator at Stills, Edinburgh