Browse Books

Photo Obscura
The Photographic in Post-Photography
Photo Obscura: The Photographic in Post-Photography discusses the profound transformation of post-photography. It argues post-photography is not merely a trend but a significant movement that redefines photography by integrating it with emerging technologies and creative practices resulting in works that may not even resemble photographs but still retain a photographic influence.
It is is structured around various themes including AI-generated images the intersection of digital and physical art forms and the changing relationship between visual representation and perception. Drawing on photo history media studies visual studies art history and the digital humanities and through discussions of specific artworks and artists it provides insights into how post-photography continues to evolve offering new ways to understand define and engage with the photographic image in the digital age. It highlights the influence of digital culture where the abundance of images and information has led to novel approaches in art that question the very nature of photography truth and reality. Still it maintains that despite this radical shift photography's influence remains central even when hidden or abstracted in the final work.

Popular Music Ethnographies
Practices, Places and Identities
This edited collection offers evocative ways into a range of fascinating worlds of popular music from the Ecuadorian indie scene to Chinese rock. In exploring the experiences of musicians fans industry professionals and academics the rich complexity of popular music is brought to life through ethnography as an immersive approach to undertaking and communicating research.
Experimenting with ethnography through the joys and tribulations of musical production fandom and scholarship these collated studies critically consider what it means to be a popular music ethnographer and to take an ethnographic approach to studying popular music.
Alongside these chapters musicians venue owners music writers live music photographers and fans add their voices and experience in the form of shorter vignettes ordering the content into three overlapping themes: practices; places; and identities.

Product Design, Technology, and Social Change
A Short Cultural History
This cultural history critically examines product design and its development from pre-industrial times to the present day considering major milestones in the mass production of goods and services aiming to incorporate a more inclusive worldview than traditional surveys of the topic.
The breadth and versatility of product design through history has been profound. Products have long supported the integration and interpretation of emerging technologies into our lives. These objects include everything from tools accessories furniture and clothing to types of transportation websites and mobile apps. Products provide singular or multiple functions are tangible and intangible and in many instances have impacted the quality of our lives by saving time or money or by increasing feelings of personal satisfaction. At the same time many products have negatively impacted people and the environment. For nearly every product that makes it into the hands of a consumer there is also a designer who created it and someone who laboured to make it.
Examines the relationship between products consumption sustainability politics and social movements. This "pocket history" surveys product design from the agricultural revolution and the birth of cities through industrialisation and a digital design revolution.

Product Design, Technology, and Social Change
A Short Cultural History
This cultural history critically examines product design and its development from pre-industrial times to the present day considering major milestones in the mass production of goods and services aiming to incorporate a more inclusive worldview than traditional surveys of the topic.
The breadth and versatility of product design through history has been profound. Products have long supported the integration and interpretation of emerging technologies into our lives. These objects include everything from tools accessories furniture and clothing to types of transportation websites and mobile apps. Products provide singular or multiple functions are tangible and intangible and in many instances have impacted the quality of our lives by saving time or money or by increasing feelings of personal satisfaction. At the same time many products have negatively impacted people and the environment. For nearly every product that makes it into the hands of a consumer there is also a designer who created it and someone who laboured to make it.
Examines the relationship between products consumption sustainability politics and social movements. This "pocket history" surveys product design from the agricultural revolution and the birth of cities through industrialisation and a digital design revolution.

The Physical and the Digital City
Invisible Forces, Data, and Manifestations
The Physical and the Digital City is a unique collection of projects where researchers and designers show how the theories of technology underpinning the digital urban environment are applied in practical and spatial terms. The authors are experts in their respective fields who pursue cutting edge solutions for city-making and consider the theoretical premise critically. It is designed to be a self-contained and interdisciplinary reference text to introduce students designers and scholars to the idea of physical/digital and its urban application.
The book will help students and designers to develop a clear understanding of the physical and digital principles underpinning urban assemblages and a solid set of references to start working within this topic with confidence. Of interest to all students and scholars interested in urban studies (geography planning urban design social sciences and humanities) and human-computer interaction (media studies computer science social sciences cognitive sciences anthropology and psychology). The book will clarify the role of digital technologies within the city along with its possible implications for people and communities.
It is oriented to the academic and professional communities interested in architectural urban and digital design from different angles. This includes those interested in computational architecture for example eCAADe Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe ACADIA Association of Computer Aided Design in Architecture CAADRIA Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia SIGraDi Sociedad Iberoamericana de Grafica Digital CAAD Futures Foundation as well as those interested in the human-computer interaction.

Performing Maternities
Political, Social and Feminist Enquiry
Performing Maternities is a collection of essays creative work images and scripts which emerged out of an online international symposium held at Brighton University in November 2020. Collectively the contributors challenge celebrate and share the normative the queer the transgressive the joy and the pain of performing maternity. The book asks key questions about the construction of maternal identities and mythologies in the contemporary world the ways these impact on individuals in different social economic and sexual identities and the ways in which - as mothers writers artists parents and grandparents -we can challenge and address those identities.

Propositions for Museum Education
International Art Educators in Conversation
From the perspective of art educators museum education is shifting to a new paradigm which this collection showcases and marks as threshold moments of change underway internationally. The goal in drawing together international perspectives is to facilitate deeper thinking making and doing practices central to museum engagement across global local and glocal contexts.
Museums as cultural brokers facilitate public pedagogies and the dispositions and practices offered in 33 chapters from 19 countries articulate how and why collections enact responsibility in public exchange
leading cultural discourses of empowerment in new ways. Organized into five sections a wide range of topics and arts-based modes of inquiry imagine new possibilities concerning theory-practice sustainability of educational partnerships and communities of practice with in and through artwork scholarship.
Chapters diverse in issues art forms and museum orientations are well-situated within museum studies enlarging discussions with trans-topographies (transdisciplinary transnational translocal and more) as critical directions for art educators.
Authors impart collective diversity through richly textured exposés first-person accounts essays and visual essays that enfold cultural activism sustainable practices and experimental teaching and learning alongside transformative exhibitions all while questioning – Who is a learner? What is a museum? Whose art is missing?

Performing with the Dead
Trances and Traces
Proposes a methodology for incorporating concepts drawn from ancestor trance in Afrolatinx ritual for actors trained in Western methods. Danowski created four new works of theatrical performance writing the play texts and incorporating acting exercises from Afrolatinx rituals adapted for non–practitioners. Working toward a phenomenological understanding of what is happening when a performer incorporates a character drawing on the ritual knowledge of trance possession in Lukumí and Palo Monte to examine how ontologies might speak to each other.
Constructing a methodology called kanga (from the Bantu for tying and untying) using three methods based on aspects of Afrolatinx ritual and modified for performance contexts: spell charm and trance. This methodology enacts and complicates distinctions between performance and ritual serving as a contribution to respectful and responsible intercultural performance practices.
The methodology is bricoleur drawing from ethnography psychoanalytic theory and phenomenology. Kanga in practice leads to a state of consciousness that Danowski calls hauntological. This borrows from Derrida but is redefined to refer to the study of haunted states of consciousness where reality is co–constituted by the living and the dead where ancestral spirits are invoked to do the work once reserved for characters.

Performance Art in Practice
Pedagogical Approaches
Performance Art in practice – pedagogical approaches opens up a variety of philosophies that explore explain and challenge Performance art and introduces a range of practices used in higher level education.
The book is a collection of nine independent essays. All the writers have several years of practice as artists curators teachers professors researchers and in establishing performance art education in Finland. The essays explain challenge and deconstruct performance art from various angles: the body as a tool and a base of identity self as material pedagogic acts of dissidence challenging societal questions without politicing art building sustainable artwork based on emotions intuition and research using Fluxus scores in contemporary practices etc. are all topics dealt by the writers of Performance Art in practice – pedagogical approaches.
The essays are written from a practical point of view: how do we concretely teach performance art why have we chosen these ways and what are the outcomes. Teaching the experimental art form that doesn’t wear a uniform and relies on ever changing time and space isn’t all evident. Deconstructing performance art and reconstructing pedagogy springs out ideas that are relevant also elsewhere in the contemporary society.
The book challenges art school institutions: Individuality bound to collegiality fruitful dialogue that bases on trust and sharing with a sociologically and politically challenging curricula come out in texts written by Aapo Korkeaoja Eero Yli-Vakkuri Jussi Matilainen Pia Lindy and Tuomas Laitinen that refer to the remote countryside campus of SAMK Kankaanpää school of art. More urban perspective with philosophies research interests and pedagogic practices at The University of Arts Helsinki are opened up by Tero Nauha Annette Arlander Pilvi Porkola and Leena Kela in their essays.

Pattern and Chaos in Art, Science and Everyday Life
Critical Intersections and Creative Practice
This collection explores critical and visual practices through the lens of interactions and intersections between pattern and chaos. The dynamic of the inter-relationship between pattern and chaos is such as to challenge disciplinary boundaries critical frameworks and modes of understanding perception and communication often referencing the in-between territory of art and science through experimentation and visual scrutiny. A territory of 'pattern-chaos' or 'chaos-pattern' begins to unfold.
Drawing upon fields such as visual culture sociology physics neurobiology linguistics or critical theory for example contributors have experimented with pattern and/or chaos-related forms processes materials sounds and language or have reflected on the work of other artists scientists and scholars. Diagrams tessellations dust knots mazes folds creases flux virus fire and flow are indicative of processes through which pattern and chaos are addressed.
The contributions are organized into clusters of subjects which reflect the interdisciplinary terrain through a robust yet also experimental arrangement. These are 'Pattern Dynamics' 'Morph Flux Mutate' 'Decompose Recompose' 'Virus; Social Imaginary' and 'Nothings in Particular'.

Popular Music in Leeds
Histories, Heritage, People and Places
This first academic collection dedicated to popular music in Leeds - developed from the work of interdisciplinary scholars drawn from a major public museum exhibition “Sounds of Our City” and built upon contemporary research. Leeds has rich musical histories and heritage a long tradition of vibrant music venues nightclubs dance halls pubs and other sites of musical entertainment.
The city has spawned crooners folk singers punks post- punks Goths DJs popstars rappers and indie rockers yet – with a few exceptions - Leeds has not been studied for its scenes in ways that other UK cities have. In ways that the chapters explore Leeds’ popular music exemplifies and informs understandings of broader cultural and urban changes – both in Britain and across wider global contexts – of the social and historical significance of music as mass media; music and migration; music racialisation and social equity; industrial decline de-industrialisation neoliberalism and the rise of the 24-hour city. Charting moments of stark musical politicisation and de-politicisation while concomitantly tracing arguments about “heritagising” popular music within discussions about music’s “place” in museums and in the urban economy this book contributes to debates about why music matters has mattered and continues to matter in Leeds and beyond.

Prison Cultures
Performance, Resistance, Desire
Prison Cultures offers the first systematic examination of women in prison and performances in and of the institution. Using a feminist approach to reach beyond tropes of 'bad girls' and simplistic inside vs. outside dynamics it examines how cultural products can perpetuate or disrupt hegemonic understandings of the world of prisons. The book identifies how and why prison functions as a fixed field and postulates new ways of viewing performances in and of prison that trouble the institution with a primary focus on the United Kingdom and examples from popular culture. A new contribution to the fields of feminist cultural criticism and prison studies Aylwyn Walsh explores how the development of a theory of resistance and desire is central to the understanding of women’s incarceration. It problematizes the prevalence of purely literary analysis or case studies that proffer particular models of arts practice as transformative of offending behaviour.

Punk Art History
Artworks from the European No Future Generation
The punk movement of the 1970s to early 1980s is examined as an art movement through archive research interviews and art historical analysis. It is about pop pain poetry presence and about a ‘no future’ generation refusing to be the next artworld avant-garde instead choosing to be the ‘rear-guard’.
Skov draws on personal interviews with punk art protagonists from London New York Amsterdam Copenhagen and Berlin among others the members Die Tödliche Doris (The Deadly Doris) members of Værkstedet Værst (The Workshop Called Worst) Nina Sten-Knudsen Marc Miller Diana Ozon Hugo Kaagman as well as email correspondence with Jon Savage Anna Banana and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
A large portion of the discussed materials stem from the protagonists' private archives while some very public—scandalous and spectacular—events are discussed too such as the Prostitution exhibition at the ICA in London in 1976 and Die Große Untergangsshow (The Grand Downfall Show) in West-Berlin in 1981. The examined materials cover almost all media: paintings drawings bricolages collages booklets posters zines installations sculptures Super 8 films documentation of performances and happenings body art street art.
What emerges is how crucial the concept of history was in punk at that point in time. The punk movement's rejection of the tale of progress and prosperity as it was being propagated on both sides of the iron curtain evidently manifested itself in punk visual art too. Central to the book is the thesis that punks placed themselves as the rear-guards not the avant-gardes a statement which was in made by Danish punks in 1981 when they called themselves “bagtropperne". Behind the rear-guard watchword was the rejection of the inherent notion of progress that the avant-garde name brings with it; how could a "no future" movement want to lead the way?
Although aimed at students and scholars of art design music and performance history the subject as well as the author’s accessible occasionally playful style will no doubt draw readers with an interest in punk music and urban histories.

Performing Temporality in Contemporary European Dance
Unbecoming Rhythms
Performing Temporality in Contemporary European Dance: Unbecoming Rhythms develops a new framework to understand how temporality is performed in contemporary dance. It combines an in-depth analysis of the choreographic practices of Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargion Ivana Müller Mette Edvardsen and Mårten Spångberg with a close study of the philosophical work of Bergson Deleuze and Bachelard.
In the field of dance and performance studies the notion of ‘unbecoming rhythms’ will stand out and spark the interest of a wide readership. Dance is still mostly associated with notions of flow and continuity. Dancers are supposed to create a continuous rhythm in which the different movements melt together. They should create the feeling of spontaneous renewal or becoming. Recently however several choreographers have experimented with rhythms that create an experience of temporal unbecoming a feeling of being stuck in time. This is the first book to develop an in-depth analysis of these rhythms and the unsettling temporal regimes they produce.
The book situates itself at the intersection of dance and philosophy. Its focus on temporality and its innovative methodological approach it will also prove to be an important contribution to the field and will be a significant resource for students scholars and practitioners.

Punk Pedagogies in Practice
Disruptions and Connections
With practitioners management and policy makers continuing to critically examine pedagogical practice in post 16 education the need to engage in conversations concerning the exact nature of this practice remains extremely pertinent.
This collection develops existing work on punk pedagogies by connecting up theory and practices whilst simultaneously disrupting current accepted approaches to pedagogy in post 16 education.
The insights generated within the various settings outlined in this book – further education higher education migrant education zine workshops community education and for speakers of other languages – are relevant beyond those contexts. They are applicable to a wide range of disciplines settings teaching and learning styles.
Contributions from Ipsita Chatterjea Mike Dines Asya Draganova Jon Evans Muhammad Fakhran al Ramadhan Michael Gratzke Matt Grimes Craig Hamilton Michael Hepworth Adam Hounslow-Eyre Dave Kane Nathan Kerrigan Marco Milano Ces Pearson Sarah Raine Katie Shaw Francis Stewart Iain Taylor Dean Thiele Elke Van dermijnsbrugge L. Viner and Laura Way.
A new volume in the Global Punk series from Intellect.

Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance
A Duet Without You and Practice as Research
The book provides an investigation grounded in creative writing and practice-as-research methodology and explores the issues of authorship and collaborative labour in contemporary performance. This investigation is set in the context of a world more and more characterized by fragmentation displacement and virtual communication and relationships. It addresses and playfully engages with the following questions: what is a collaborative body? Can a sole performer carry out a collaborative practice ? Can we stand in for others? What forms of “coming-together” might take place when distance remains between those who perform and those who spectate?
The book contains the full-length version of the score from A Duet Without You an original performance piece created between 2013 and 2015 by Chloé Déchery in collaboration with a range of artistic collaborators working inter- and cross-disciplinary including Karen Christopher Pedro Iñes Simone Kenyon Marty Langthorne Tom Parkinson Michael Pinchbeck and Deborah Pearson.
Alongside the playtext the book entails a collection of essays written by independent writers artists and academics and dedicated to the politics of collaboration ranging from performative responses and co-authored articles to in-depth theoretical essays.
Primary readership will be those teaching researching or studying in theatre and performance studies visual arts fine arts art history creative writing poetry philosophy or French literature. Will also be of interest to art school students and those with an interest in theatre.

Patchwork
Essays & Interviews on Caribbean Visual Culture
The patchwork is an apt metaphor for the region not only because of its colourfulness and the making of something whole out of fragments but as an attempt to make coherence out of disorder. The seeking of coherence was the exact process of putting together this book and foregrounds the process of Caribbean societies forging identity and identities out of plural and at times conflicting and contested groups that came to call the region home.
Within the metaphor of the patchwork however is the question where are the vernacular needlework artists within the visual art tradition of the Caribbean? The introduction sets out to both clarify and rectify this situation and several common themes flow through the following essays and interviews. Themes include that that the land and colonization remain baseline issues for several Caribbean artists who stage and restage the history of conquest and empire in varying ways. That artists in the region amalgamate as part of their practice and seem to prefer an open-endedness to art making as opposed to expressing fidelity to a particular medium. That artists and scholars alike are dismantling long-held perceptions of what Caribbean art is thought to be and are challenging boundaries in Caribbean art.
These are among the issues addressed in the book as it looks at ecological concerns and questions of sustainability how the practices of the artists and their art defy the easy categorization of the region and the placement of women in the visual art ecology of the Caribbean. The latter is one of the most contested areas of the book. Readers should come away with the sense that questions of race colour and class loom large within questions of gender in the Jamaican art scene and that the book dedicated to Sane Mae Dunkley aims to insert vernacular needleworkers into the visual art scene in both Jamaica and the larger Caribbean.
Audience will include researchers and scholars of Caribbean and African diasporic art college students those interested in post-colonial studies Caribbean artists art professionals interested in a wider globalized view of contemporary art; students curious to know about the many phases of art production throughout the Caribbean. General readers interested in the culture of the region.

The Performing Observer
Essays on Contemporary Art, Performance and Photography
The Performing Observer is a collection of short critical writings on contemporary art performance and photography written over the course of the past two decades. These texts were originally published in a variety of settings including art magazines and exhibition catalogues online journals and websites.
A wide range of global practitioners are analysed from emerging to established artists. As the title suggests Patrick feels that he is simultaneously performing a role while observing and writing about the field. The intention is to present a well-informed but jargon free survey of many significant developments in contemporary art and culture. Among the artists discussed are: Francis Alÿs Laurie Anderson Chris Burden William Eggleston Cindy Sherman and Andy Warhol.
The book examines an important series of interconnected contemporary art practices. Layering writings on performance-based work material forms and photography it positions performance within a larger context. The artists selected are genuinely international with a strong focus on the southern hemisphere and are grouped together in sections Patrick calls Performance Photography Publicness Video Books and Exhibitions.
It aims to make sense of a specific modality of art making with an interesting - and to a degree unspoken - interest in art writing itself. Both elements are compelling separately but especially so together.
Accessibly written and especially approachable for a range of interested readers. It offers scholarly and critical depth while retaining a writing style that will appeal beyond a strictly scholarly audience. It will appeal to readers closely involved in contemporary art theory and practice whether students artists academics or simply curious to know more.

Performing Institutions
Contested Sites and Structures of Care
Performing Institutions: Contested Sites and Structures of Care builds upon scholarly work rooted in the social and cultural histories of education self-organization activist practices performance design and artistic research (at)tending to the ways that institutions are necessarily political and performed.
By evoking the idea of Performing Institutions it foregrounds all kinds of ‘actors’ that engage with (re)imagining creative practices - social artistic and pedagogical - that critically interact with institutional frameworks and the broader local and global society of which these institutions are part.
With case studies and critical reflections from Denmark Ireland Finland the UK Canada the USA Chile Asia and Australasia contributors show how they envision or pursue performing artistic cultural social and educational practices as caring engagements with contested sites addressing the following questions. How do current institutions perform – academically spatially custodially and structurally? How might we stay engaged with the ways that institutions are inherently contested sites and what role do care and counter-hegemonic practices play in rearticulating other ways of performing institutions and how they perform on us?
These are the questions central to this book as it stages a productive tension between two main themes: structures of care (instituting otherwise) and sites of contestations (desiring change).
Some of the texts in this collection stage a productive tension between ideas about caring contestations and contestation as a caring engagement in practice with a view towards institutional transformation. Other contributors investigate the idea of caring contestations as a critical concept that draws attention to questions of power and to the exclusions produced and reproduced in and through specific institutional practices. As such this collection of writing puts forward caring contestations as a critical mode for (re)enacting institutional engagements. This also brings forward questions of agency and how for those of us who perform within institutional structures we care to engage and/or contest those institutional engagements.
It is primarily aimed at scholars educators research-practitioners and postgraduate students in the fields of performance studies theory creation and design those working at art institutions and art schools Also relevant to researchers working across various fields of organizational as well as educational approaches to performance culture.

Places and Purposes of Popular Music Education
Perspectives from the Field
This book provides a manuscript-megaphone for a variety of perspectives on popular music education including those we do not usually hear from but who are doing far and away the coolest most relevant and most interesting things.
It includes rants manifestos and pieces that are pithy and punchy and poignant which have resulted in a wide tonal variety among chapters from more traditionally scholarly pieces replete with citations and references through descriptions of practice to straight-up polemics. It is more about beliefs experiences and motivation about frustrations aspirations and celebrations. The chapters are intended to whet appetites prime pumps open eyes and keep cogs turning. This book is organized into four parts: Beyond the Classroom Identity and Purpose Higher Education and Politics and Ideology. This book is intended for academics of all ages and stages but the writing is often deliberately non-academic in tone.
The book will appeal to those working in popular music studies communication studies education research and should be of interest to those involved in policy decisions at national and regional levels. It is also directly relevant to researchers looking music industry and music ecosystems nationally regionally and internationally as education and popular music industry DIY and community sectors continue to enmesh in complex and evolving ways.