I welcome this new book about materiality. It explores questions of embodiment in our age of virtuality, and that is no small matter.' Writers include James Agee, Ariella Azoulay, Walter Benjamin, Adam Broomberg, Judith Butler, Oliver Chanarin, Georges Didi-Huberman, John Grierson, David Levi Strauss, Elizabeth McCausland, Carl Plantinga, Jacques Rancière, Martha Rosler, Jean-Paul Sartre, Allan Sekula, Susan Sontag, Hito Steyerl and Trinh T. Minh-ha. Writers include Joseph A. Amato, Karen Barad, Judith Butler, Elizabeth Grosz, Hubert Damisch, Georges Didi-Huberman, Natasha Eaton, Briony Fer, Vil èm Flusser, Jens Hauser, Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm, Tim Ingold, Wolfgang Kemp, Julia Kristeva, Esther Leslie, Jean François-Lyotard, Sadie Plant, Dietmar Rϋbel, Viktoria Schmidt-Linsenhoff, Simon Taylor, Hilke Wagner, Monika Wagner, and Gillian Whiteley. Writers include Daniel Birnbaum, Norman Bryson, Douglas Crimp, Gilles Deleuze, Sebastian Egenhofer, Hal Foster, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Isabelle Graw, David Joselit, Shirley Kaneda, Geeta Kapur, Thomas Lawson, Midori Matsui, Lane Relyea, Rene Ricard, Jerry Saltz, Mira Schor, Barry Schwabsky and Adrian Searle. Antony Hudek is Senior Lecturer at Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University. He is a translator of works by Jean-François Lyotard, a writer on contemporary art, independent curator and co-publisher of Occasional Papers.

A definitive guide to the rising status of sound in art, through original critical writings and artists' statements.Part of the acclaimed Documents of Contemporary Art series of anthologies which collect writing on major themes and ideas in contemporary art. With newly commissioned texts by artist Anna Zett, artist David Steans, and writer Mark Pilkington.

This anthology provides a definitive historical context for documentary, exploring its roots in modernism and its critique under postmodernism; it surveys current theoretical thinking about documentary; and it examines a wide range of work by artists within, around or against documentary through their own writings and interviews. MIT Press Direct is a distinctive collection of influential MIT Press books curated for scholars and libraries worldwide. Lucy Steeds is an editor of the Exhibition Histories series for Afterall Books and pathway leader in Exhibition Studies at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London. Writers include Marco Belpoliti, John Berger, Paul Crowther, Jacques Derrida, Okwui Enwezor, Jean Fisher, Barbara Claire Freeman, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Doreet LeVitte-Harten, Eleanor Heartney, Lynn M. Herbert, Luce Irigaray, Fredric Jameson, Lee Joon, Julia Kristeva, Jean-François Lyotard, Thomas McEvilley, Vijay Mishra, David Morgan, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière, Gene Ray, Robert Rosenblum, Philip Shaw, Marina Warner, Thomas Weiskel and Slavoj Žižek. Part of the acclaimed Documents of Contemporary Art series of anthologies which collect writing on major themes and ideas in contemporary art.The object is this thing that refuses to go away. Virtual reality, conceptual art and numerous philosophical and psychological traditions have sought to de-thingify the world, but the object, in its many forms, persists. This anthology surveys reappraisals of what constitutes the ‘objectness’ of production, with art as its focus. Among the topics it examines are the relation of the object to subjectivity; distinctions between objects and ‘things’; the significance of the object’s transition from inert mass to tool or artefact; and the meanings of the everyday in the found object, repetition in the replicated or multiple object, loss in the absent object, and abjection in the formless or degraded object. It also explores artistic positions that are anti-object; theories of the experimental, liminal or mental object; and the role of objects in performance. The object becomes a prism through which to re-read contemporary art and better understand its recent past. Artists surveyed include Rasheed Araeen, Art & Language, AA Bronson, Daniel Buren, Graciela Carnevale, Andrea Fraser, Piero Gilardi, Group Material, Richard Hamilton, Huang Rui, Laboratoire Agit-Art, Louise Lawler, Glenn Ligon, Konrad Lueg, Matsuzawa Yutaka, Palle Nielsen, OHO (Marko Pogagnik), Hélio Oiticica, Philippe Parreno, Victor Pasmore, Raqs Media Collective, Gerhard Richter, Ruangrupa, Situationist International, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Andy Warhol and Katsuhiro Yamaguchi. From the hexing of presidents to a renewed interest in herbalism and atavistic forms of self-care, magic has furnished the contemporary imagination with mysterious and often disorienting bodies of arcane thought and practice. This volume brings together writings by artists, magicians, historians and theorists, that illuminate the vibrant correspondences animating contemporary art’s varied encounters with magical culture, inspiring a reconsideration of the relationship between the symbolic and the pragmatic. Dan Byrne-Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art Theory at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts, London. His published work includes Traces of Modernity (2012).