Lauren Cornell - Böcker

Invisible Adversaries is inspired by the eponymous 1976 feature film by the radical Austrian artist Valie Export. The film presents a woman’s struggle to retain her sense of self against hostile alien forces that appear increasingly ubiquitous, colonizing the minds of all those around her. Motifs from the film--among them, architecture’s influence on identity; feminist critique; and the power of political fantasy--operate as filters through which to consider significant pieces from the Marieluise Hessel Collection. In addition to works by Valie Export, Invisible Adversaries draws primarily from acquisitions of the Marieluise Hessel Collection over the past decade, with works by over 50 artists including Chantal Akerman, Ida Applebroog, Lynda Benglis, Barbara Bloom, Patty Chang, Anne Collier, Reneke Dijkstra, K8 Hardy, Roni Horn, Glenn Ligon, Leigh Ledare, Helen Marten, William Pope.L, Hito Steyerl, Magali Reus, Rachel Rose, Thomas Ruff, Lorna Simpson, Diane Simpson, Jo Spence and Gillian Wearing.

Fifty years of media critique from the leading exponent of feminist video artThroughout her five-decade career, New York–based artist Dara Birnbaum (born 1946) has relentlessly dissected the process of watching and has argued against the passive absorption of mass media, information and ideology, through various techniques—many of which can be described as subversive reactions or reversals. As media itself has evolved over the years, from the monolithic nature of TV broadcast networks to the Internet’s decentralization of information, Birnbaum’s work has remained consistently prescient and vital, incorporating new technologies and providing a touchstone for generations of younger artists.Including original scholarship by leading critics and curators of moving image and media art, this book examines Birnbaum's key works and concepts to illustrate how much her practice has to teach in a technology and media laden culture that demands constant participation and response.

Leaving fingerprints and tool marks behind, a São Paulo artist evokes the cycles of the cosmosThis volume takes an expansive view of the bold and influential practice of Brazilian artist Erika Verzutti (born 1971), surveying more than 60 pieces made over the past 15 years. In Verzutti’s art, moons recur as symbols of renewal and the multiple phases that a person or entity can pass through. Her work presents novel modes of perception by orbiting outside set systems of being—zooming out, in a telescopic sense, to the point where the relations we take so seriously here on Earth can be rethought. Vibrant illustrations of individual works and installation views of New Moons, the artist’s first US museum survey, highlight how her approaches to display and presentation reveal such relationships. Presenting original scholarship on the art historical and theoretical aspects of Verzutti’s practice as well as the artist’s own writing, this book offers insights on the inspiration and multifaceted ideas at play across her work.

Douglas' first US survey charts his global influence and innovation across 40 works and reimagines D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915)Published with Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College and Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.Since the 1980s, Canadian artist Stan Douglas (born 1960) has created films, installations, photographs and other multidisciplinary projects that address moments of rupture where "history could go one way or the other." Across formats, his images recall things that haunt: unresolved moments, political tumult and violent turning points; plots that retain a hold, however imperceptible, on the present. His work operates within the genres of cinema, photography and theater to present a point of view that is always staged. Douglas' rigorous explorations of these charged histories show us how to "think historically in the present" and frame contemporary crises in a longer timeline.