Elisabeth von Samsonow - Böcker

A close examination of the relationship between media, art, and the “Electra complex”The feminist counterpart to Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, Anti-Electra is a philosophy of “the girl” as a model of contemporary transgressive subjectivity. Elisabeth von Samsonow asserts that focusing on the girl’s escape from the Oedipus complex leads to a fundamental shift in our most common views on media and art.Presenting an interpretation of contemporary technics, Anti-Electra argues that technology today encompasses Electra’s gadgets and toys. According to von Samsonow, satellite drive technologies such as wireless telephones, WLAN, and GPS echo the “preoedipal constellation” that the girl specializes in. And with the help of the girl, the cartography of overlapping zones between humankind and animals, as well as between humankind and apparatuses, is redesigned through what the book holds as a “radical totemism.” Anti-Electra ultimately offers a new view on gender, the contemporary world dyed by symbolic girlism, and the (universal) girl in critical dialogue with media, ecology, and society.

As a metaphor for the living, Gerti Machacek’s jewellery is very much centred on the body, geared toward movement and changing perspectives. Despite the different materials, its pervasive clarity fascinates and delights the wearer. This monograph offers comprehensive insights into the work of an Austrian art jewellery pioneer. Her ideas comprise thrilling combinations of figurative evolution, architectural development, and a richly layered sense of humour. Essays by the art historian Anne-Katrin Rossberg, the artist and philosopher Elisabeth von Samsonow, and the writers Beatrix Kramlovsky and Lydia Mischkulnig reveal a personal approach to Machacek’s work, while the visual artist Sophie Pölzl contributed exceptional images with her photograms of selected pieces of jewellery.Text in English and German.