Published to accompany a major exhibition held at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne during spring 2022 (18 February – 15 May), which gathers together works by, among others, Miriam Cahn, Michel François, Philip Guston, Thomas Hirschhorn, William Kentridge, Sigalit Landau, Nalini Malani, Teresa Margolles, Zanele Muholi, and Félix Vallotton, this volume of newly commissioned essays by leading international philosophers, cultural theoreticians, activists, and art historians acts as a reader for the theories and practices of resistance today.
From specific case studies on artists (Nalini Malani) and recent events (StrikeMoMA, “artwashing”) to global reflections and philosophical essays about what it means and how to resist today, this book offers a polyphonic thinking about a burning topic in our ever more complex global world.
The core stakes identified by the 11 writers are the relationships between art and democracy, resistance as value creation, the oppositions between the personal and the collective, the so-called “system” and anti-system thinking, and how the art world can propose, accompany, and respond to today’s forms of resistance.
The contributors include Dutch cultural theorist and video artist Mieke Bal; Belgian philosopher Pascal Chabot; Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne’s Director Bernard Fibicher; German philosopher Markus Gabriel; German art historian and Texte zur Kunst co-founder Isabelle Graw; American curator and writer Mary Jane Jacob; French philosopher Plínio W. Prado; American social activist and analyst Andrew Ross; American artist and activist Gregory Sholette; German philosopher Markus Steinweg; and and Swiss curator and art historian Michel Thévoz.
This volume is part of the Documents series, co-published with Les presses du réel and dedicated to critical writing.