Christopher Williams-Wynn – författare

How systems thinking underpinned some of the most significant cultural activity between the mid-1960s and early 1980s in the Americas and Europe.Arts of Control argues that much of the new artistic, critical, and curatorial activity between the mid-1960s and early 1980s was propelled by a fascination with the Cold War sciences of control. Christopher Williams-Wynn reveals the breadth, depth, and variation of cultural encounters with the sciences of control—shorthand for the related disciplines of cybernetics, systems theory, and information theory—that underwrote a widespread turn to systems thinking across institutions and disciplines, from biology to economics. Defining the arts of control as those forms of practice that internalized the metaphors, methods, and models of systems thinking, this book shows that the central problem was the very way in which connections themselves were framed and understood.Drawing on original archival research conducted in six countries, the book is structured around four key concepts from systems theory—boundaries, environments, relations, and elements—and focuses on Argentina, East Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Williams-Wynn closely examines work by Jack Burnham, Stephen Willats, Luis Benedit, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, and others. Working at different scales, each chapter reveals how these artists and critics mobilized systems thinking to reflect on political, technological, and social shifts via a range of media, from prints and sculptures to participatory projects and mail art.

This book examines repatriation processes beyond political and legal debates. Pushing against institutional constraints, the Repatriates Collective opens up new perspectives on cultural heritage and demonstrates how art can actively pave the way for restitution. Bringing together community members and long-standing collaborators, the Repatriates Collective is united by a steadfast political commitment to restitution projects in Australia, Benin, Mexico, Nigeria, and Namibia. The voices gathered here come from the visual arts, art criticism, history, film studies and curatorial practice. Through multifaceted approaches ranging from intensive archival research to visual essays they offer deep insights into the complex challenges and forward-looking possibilities of global repatriation processes. This book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Tide of Returns presented by TBA21-Academy at Ocean Space in Venice, where the Repatriates Collective is showcasing its artistic works. Both the book and exhibition are dedicated to all those seeking the restitution of cultural property. Repatriates is an artistic research collective that responds to the complex cultural, emotional, and historical dimensions that accompany the return of objects from major museums in Europe to source communities in the Americas, Africa, and Oceania. The collective gathers multiple voices to produce a series of new artworks, books, exhibitions, films, and workshops that plot the significance and future potential of repatriated cultural heritage. Established and led by TBA21-Academy and located in the Church of San Lorenzo in Venice, Ocean Space is a planetary center for exhibitions, research and public programs catalyzing critical ocean literacy, collaborative research, and environmental advocacy through the arts.