A wide-ranging and challenging exploration of design and how it engages with the selfThe field of design has radically expanded. As a practice, design is no longer limited to the world of material objects but rather extends from carefully crafted individual styles and online identities to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes.Superhumanit...

GARDEN STATE - Cinematic Space and Choreographic Time is the third issue of the SAC JOURNAL and explores the garden as a utopia wherein time and space may be thought of in archi- tectural terms yet not easily deciphered against architecture's traditions and practices. The garden herein is a changeable and vulnerable condition, embodying the ephemerality of life, which in turn contrasts with the customary expectations of architec- ture's longevity. However, Garden State also engages with th...

A New York Times Notable BookA stunningly original exploration of the ties that bind us to the beautiful, ancient, astoundingly accomplished, largely unknown, and unfathomably different species with whom we share the world.For as long as humans have existed, insects have been our constant companions. Yet we hardly know them, not even the ones we’re closest to: those that eat our food, share our beds, and live in our homes. Organizing his book alpha...

French philosopher Gilles Deleuze is known as a thinker of creation, joyous affirmation, and rhizomatic assemblages. In this short book, Andrew Culp polemically argues that this once-radical canon of joy has lost its resistance to the present. Concepts created to defeat capitalism have been recycled into business mantras that joyously affirm “Power is vertical; potential is horizontal!”Culp recovers the Deleuze’s forgotten negativity. He unsettles the prevailing interpretation thro...

There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis. But if the end of capitalism seems to many like the end of the world, how is it possible for Western society to face up to the end times? In a major new analysis of our global situation, Zizek argues that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and withdrawal....

An engaging account of today’s contemporary art world that features original articles by leading international art historians, critics, curators, and artists, introducing varied perspectives on the most important debates and discussions happening around the world.Features a collection of all-new essays, organized around fourteen specific themes, chosen to reflect the latest debates in contemporary art since 1989Each topic is prefaced by an introduction on current di...

The end of the world is a seemingly interminable topic Ð at least, of course, until it happens. Environmental catastrophe and planetary apocalypse are subjects of enduring fascination and, as ethnographic studies show, human cultures have approached them in very different ways. Indeed, in the face of the growing perception of the dire effects of global warming, some of these visions have been given a new lease on life. Information and analyses concerning the human causes and the catastroph...

The Earth has reached a tipping point. Runaway climate change, the sixth great extinction of planetary life, the acidification of the oceans—all point toward an era of unprecedented turbulence in humanity’s relationship within the web of life. But just what is that relationship, and how do we make sense of this extraordinary transition?Anthropocene or Capitalocene? offers answers to these questions from a dynamic group of leading critical scholars. They challenge the theor...

Collaborative and collective art practices have proliferated around the world over the past fifteen years. In The One and the Many, Grant H. Kester provides an overview of the broader continuum of collaborative art, ranging from the work of artists and groups widely celebrated in the mainstream art world, such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Superflex, Francis Alÿs, and Santiago Sierra, to the less-publicized projects of groups, such as Park Fiction in Hamburg, Networking and Initiatives fo...

The spread of capsular civilization is a worst-case scenario that is taking shape before our very eyes, without us even being aware of it. In the face of the speed of our technology, the suburbanization of our daily lives and the ever more extreme but poignant polarization of our society, we feel obliged to return to the capsules of our vehicles, in architectural cocoons or urbanistic enclaves: malls, gated communities, amusement parks. Since September 11, the war in Iraq and the War on Te...

Most of the people who work in the field attain an implicit knowledge of design languages through exposure to design discourse, that is to say, to the ecosystem comprised of products, companies, showrooms, trade shows, events, exhibitions, magazines, and blogs that deal with design. And just as there is no need to study grammar in order to speak effectively, so too can one learn to “speak” design proficiently without necessarily studying its “grammar.” Yet, as more and more people enter th...

We live in an age of impotence. Stuck between global war and global finance, between identity and capital, we seem to be incapable of producing that radical change that is so desperately needed. Is there still a way to disentangle ourselves from a global order that shapes our politics as well as our imagination?In his most systematic book to date, renowned Italian theorist Franco Berardi Bifo tackles this question through a solid yet visionary analysis of the three fundamental conce...