Conspiracy Dwellings: Surveillance in Contemporary Art

anthonydowney Books

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010 | CONTRIBUTOR

‘Conspiracy Dwellings: Surveillance in Contemporary Art’ brings together nine illustrated essays of theorists and art practitioners about artworks made in the midst of conflict or from the position of commentary and critique in topics that span from the 70s to the present day. The contributors Anthony Downey, Christine Eyene, Liam Kelly, Verena Kyselka, Robert Knifton, Outi Remes, Maciej Ozog, Paula Roush, Matthew Shaul and Pam Skelton consider the practical and theoretical status of surveillance from a variety of positions that include surveillance and its impact on urban space, architecture, citizenship and civil liberties. These essays also provide the opportunity to consider artworks that address conflict and resistance as a lived experience alongside strategies of counter-surveillance that propose new spectatorial positions, individual empowerment and entertainment. Today, in post 9/11 times of economic difficulties, political uncertainty and suspicion, the subject of patriotism, freedom and democratic rights are once again high on the agenda, raising questions such as where do we draw the line – how far does surveillance have to go before it worries us – and at what point is the citizen regarded as a threat to the state?

Chapter authored: The Lives of Others: Artur Zmijewski’s Repetition, The Stanford Prison Experiment, and the Ethics of Surveillance.

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Reference

Downey, Anthony. “The Lives of Others: Artur Zmijewski’s Repetition, The Stanford Prison Experiment, and the Ethics of Surveillance.” Conspiracy Dwellings: Surveillance in Contemporary Art. Ed. Outi Remes and Pam Skelton. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2010. 67-82.

Art and Authenticity

anthonydowney Books

Lund Humphries, 2012 | CONTRIBUTOR

Art and Authenticity explores a range of questions around the ideas of authenticity, originality and replication in art. The authors move far beyond the fundamental question of ‘Is it genuine?’ to themes and definitions surrounding authenticity as a concept operating across different periods and contexts. The chapters consider empirical aspects of art analysis but also more conceptual and theoretical understandings of authenticity. For example, is there such a thing as authentic presentation and display of artworks? Can the idea of authenticity be applied to subject-matter and style? How do the art market and the art world respond to the perceived authenticity of artworks? This book addresses a wide range of topics within the arts and will appeal to a broad readership, from students and art specialists to art-world enthusiasts. Historically, the idea of scientific verification has arisen as a reaction against the perceived excesses of the connoisseurial tradition, a tradition which has fallen from favour over the last 50 years. The idea of individual ‘expert knowledge’ rests uneasily in the current climate. However, recent attempts by experts to develop definitive scientific methods for authenticating artworks are also proving to be problematic. Connoisseurship, it will be argued, still has its role to play within these debates. Therefore, through the broad range of artworks and perspectives developed within this volume, the book suggests that although the concept of authenticity is not without validity or usefulness, it nonetheless poses a continually moving target within the frameworks of varied cultural and historical constructs. The authors challenge a narrow interpretation of ‘authenticity’ as a concept applied to the art world, for the issues surrounding authenticity are rarely black and white.

Chapter authored: Authenticity, Originality and Conceptual Art: Will the Real Elaine Sturtevant Please Stand Up?

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Cultural Theory

anthonydowney Books

SAGE Publications, 2010 | CONTRIBUTOR

This four volume collection brings together papers from a range of different journals from different fields, sub-disciplines and disciplines that address the central problem of the relation between culture and society. In doing so, it frames understandings of experience, text, meaning, power, stratification, identity, representation, practice, discourse, materiality, image, technology, and the many other concepts and categories in the context of this fundamental interrelationship.

Although the themes of culture and society provide the broad parameters of these four volumes, Cultural Theory makes visible some of the different objects of theoretical discourse that different schools of thought and theoretical paradigms have thrown before us. The four volumes traverse the disciplines of, amongst others, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, literary theory, media and communication studies, and science and technology studies, to provide a sense of the development and extension of cultural theory from initial and longstanding questions about power and agency, ordinary and popular cultural practice, and representation to ones about the body, sensory experience and identity to the changing natural and built environment and questions about global humanity and justice to developments in the global cultural economy concerning information, technology and value.

Throughout this collection, the editor offers a coherent, complex, and multiply inflected narrative which is both grounded in the substantive histories of the field and oriented to some of its most exciting and forward looking ideas and prospects.

Chapter authored: Zones of Indistinction: Giorgio Agamben’s ‘Bare Life’ and the Politics of Aesthetics.

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