Ape Culture. Anselm Franke, Hila Peleg (Eds.). Spector Books

Posted in Exhibition catalogue, writing on July 16th, 2015
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With contributions by Christophe Boesch, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Ines Doujak mit John Barker und Matthew Hyland, Cord Riechelmann and others.

»Ape Culture« traces the long cultural and scientific obsession with humanity’s closest relatives. In the Western historical representations of modernity, depictions of apes were traditionally used to show the absence of culture. Standing as a liminal figure separating humans and animals, the ape has, since ancient times, played a central role in the narrative of civilisational progress. This book, which appears in conjunction with the exhibition of the same nameseeks, however, to go beyond the mere examination of apes as signifiers of difference. The juxtaposition of artworks with documents taken from popular culture and the history of primatology gives the reader an insight into what the science historian Donna Haraway has termed the »primate order« — a hall of mirrors reflecting the scientific and cultural projections that turned the ape from an instrument of humanity’s self-definition into an integral element in testing out the possibility of reconstructing human »nature«. »Ape Culture« will be shown at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt from 30 April to 6 July 2015.

€29.00

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Beastly / Tierisch. Duncan Forbes & Daniela Jansen (Eds.). Spector Books

Posted in Exhibition catalogue, photography on July 16th, 2015
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beastly_tierisch_Duncan_Forbes_Daniela_Jansen_spector_books_motto_distribution_01  beastly_tierisch_Duncan_Forbes_Daniela_Jansen_spector_books_motto_distribution_09beastly_tierisch_Duncan_Forbes_Daniela_Jansen_spector_books_motto_distribution_08beastly_tierisch_Duncan_Forbes_Daniela_Jansen_spector_books_motto_distribution_07beastly_tierisch_Duncan_Forbes_Daniela_Jansen_spector_books_motto_distribution_06beastly_tierisch_Duncan_Forbes_Daniela_Jansen_spector_books_motto_distribution_05beastly_tierisch_Duncan_Forbes_Daniela_Jansen_spector_books_motto_distribution_04beastly_tierisch_Duncan_Forbes_Daniela_Jansen_spector_books_motto_distribution_03beastly_tierisch_Duncan_Forbes_Daniela_Jansen_spector_books_motto_distribution_02beastly_tierisch_Duncan_Forbes_Daniela_Jansen_spector_books_motto_distribution_10beastly_tierisch_Duncan_Forbes_Daniela_Jansen_spector_books_motto_distribution_10Representations of animals are ubiquitous: from advertising hoardings, newspapers, books, magazines, and television shows, to the hundreds of thousands of images uploaded every day to the Internet. During the last twenty years, artists, too, have engaged with the animal in an effort to articulate more “beastly” visions. How can animals as autonomous creative entities take possession of an unshackled imaginative space cut loose from the human? Beastly/ Tierisch has an innovative, visually daring design, superimposing a selection of artistic works onto a host of pictures from the Internet. This rich image material is supplemented by four essays: about animality and the history of photography (Duncan Forbes), the political and philosophical animal (Slavoj Žižek), the virtual zoo of the Internet (Ana Teixeira Pinto), and the changing identities of animals under anthropogenic pressures (Heather Davis).

€28.00

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