Critical Strategies in Art and Media

Nonfiction. Art. Criticism and Theory. Beyond the obsolete models of artist or author as genius and their fetish objects, what collective and collaborative practices are inventing new terrains and flows? As information and communication technologies saturate our world, how is art giving way to new forms of cultural symbolic manipulation? What new kinds of "virtual" spaces are opening up for cultural practice in electronic media? As "old media" begin to collapse under the pressures of the virtual, what new media can we find? How are didactic illustration and channeled dissidence giving way to new forms of surprise and intensity? What strategies elude the creative industries' seemingly infinite appetite for things radical? Are there any strategies that can elude being reduced to styles in the service of sales, or are critical practices doomed to play cat and mouse with the forces of consumerism? What could be insurrectional? What libratory? Contributors include Ted Byfield, Steve Kurtz, Amanda McDonald Crowley, Claire Pentecost, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Franco (Bifo) Berardi, Marco Deseriis, Rene Gabri, Brian Holmes, McKenzie Wark, Felix Stalder.