ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
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Weathering a perfect storm of images
Hito Steyerl's book is a worthy but flawed attempt to mediate the negative visual overload of contemporary culture, says NICK WRIGHT
Death comes for Liberals, entitled murder, Vatican hit squads, and fraternising with the Blitz killer
New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, and John Luther Adams
GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
The Bard pays homage to Hull’s finest promoter and venue, and awards Douze Points to Laibach
KEVIN DONNELLY outlines how the bourgeois institutions inhibit our ability to to view art in revolutionary ways, and suggests some tactics to overturn it
Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War
Hito Steyerl
(Verso £9.99)
IT’S not always the case that art professionals — artists themselves, critics and connoisseurs, historians and theorists — ground their thought and language in the distinctions, connections and contradictions revealed in a materialist scrutiny of the images that they create, consider or curate.
While the idea that the products of cultural work can be studied and understood independently of the circumstances in which they are produced persists, the very speed and complexity of the contemporary and highly mediated world allows little time for the quiet contemplation of classical beauty.
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