Full Description
If farce follows tragedy, what follows farce? Where does the double predicament of a post-truth and post-shame politics leave artists and critics on the left? How to demystify a hegemonic order that dismisses its own contradictions? How to belittle a political elite that cannot be embarrassed, or to mock party leaders who thrive on the absurd? How to out-dada President Ubu? And, in any event, why add outrage to a media economy that thrives on the same? What Comes After Farce? comments on shifts in art, criticism, and fiction in the face of the current regime of war, surveillance, extreme inequality, and media disruption. A first section focuses on the cultural politics of emergency since 9/11, including the use and abuse of trauma, paranoia, and kitsch. A second reviews the neoliberal makeover of art institutions during the same period. Finally, a third section surveys transformations in media as reflected in recent art, film, and fiction. Among the phenomena explored here are "machine vision" (images produced by machines for other machines without a human interface),"operational images" (images that do not represent the world so much as intervene in it), and the algorithmic scripting of information so pervasive in our everyday lives.
Contents
Preface
I. Terror and Transgression
1. Traumatic Trace
2. Bush Kitsch
3. Paranoid Style
4. Wild Things
5. Père Trump
6. Conspirators
II. Plutocracy and Display
7. Fetish Gods
8. Beautiful Breath
9. Human Strike
10. Exhibitionists
11. Gray Boxes
12. Underpainting
III. Media and Fiction
13. Player Piano
14. Robo Eye
15. Smashed Screens
16. Machine Images
17. Model Worlds
18. Real Fictions
Notes
Index
