Room for Reading features publications about and selected by exhibiting artists in our programme. To coincide with Thomas Demand’s exhibition ‘Daily Show’, he has selected three books for our Room for Reading.
Ben Lerner, ‘10:04’ (2015); Michael Fried, ‘Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before’ (2008); Alexander Klugt and Oskar Negt, ‘History and Obstinacy’ (1981).
Demand’s first selection is the novel ‘10:04’ by Ben Lerner (2015). The book tells the story of a writer, who has in the past year, enjoyed unexpected literary success, been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, and been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child. The novel charts an exhilarating course through the contemporary landscape of sex, friendship, memory, art and politics, and captures what it is like to be alive right now.
In ‘Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before’ (2008), Michael Fried argues that from the late 1970s onward, as photography is made at large scale and presented on a wall, that photographers had to grapple with issues centering on the relationship between the photograph and the viewer. Fried further demonstrates that certain philosophical problems - associated with notions of theatricality, literalness, and objecthood, and touching on the role of original intention in artistic production, first discussed in his controversial essay 'Art and Objecthood' (1967) - have come to the fore once again in recent photography. This means that the photographic 'ghetto' no longer exists; instead photography is at the cutting edge of contemporary art as never before.
Demand’s final selection is ‘History and Obstinacy’ (1981) by Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt. ‘History and Obstinacy’ turns its attention to the human side of political economy: the living forces of production, the anthropology of labor power, the soft tissue of capitalism. Kluge and Negt ask what happens when we apply the theoretical tools of Marx’s analysis not to dead labour but to its living and breathing counterpart, to the human subject.
Read an excerpt from (10:04) here.
Read ‘Why Photography Matters as art never before’ here.
Read ‘History and Obstinacy’ here.
Details
Room for Reading is a space to engage with research related to our programme as recommended by the artists and collaborators we work with at The Common Guild.
Books are suggested in conjunction with our exhibitions and projects.
