Tom McDonough Knihy

The Black Dada Reader is a collection of texts and documents that elucidates Black Dada, a term the artist Adam Pendleton uses to define his artistic output.The Reader brings a diverse range of cultural figures into a shared cultural space, including Hugo Ball, W.E.B. Du Bois, Stokely Carmichael, and Gertrude Stein, as well as artists from different generations, such as Joan Jonas and William Pope.L.Originally intended to be an in-studio publication, the Reader has expanded to include essays on the concept of Black Dada and its historical implications.

The Situationist International (SI), led by the revolutionary Guy Debord, were active throughout the 1950s and 60s. They published the journal Internationale Situationniste that included many incendiary texts on politics and art, and were a galvanizing force in the revolutions of May 1968. The importance of their work has been felt particularly in their revolutionary analysis of cities. The SI were responsible for utopian imaginings of the city, where its alienating effects from its routine use as a site of consumption and work were banished and it was instead to be turned into a place of play. Tom McDonough collects all the SI’s key work in this area for an essential one-stop collection. Including such essential works as ‘The Theory of the Derive’, ‘Formulary for a New Urbanism’, and many previously untranslated texts, the book will also be strikingly illustrated by the images that were core to the Situationist project.

The book explores the transformation of culture into a battleground for meaning in France, detailing how various elements from advertising and journalism were repurposed for political objectives in art and film. It highlights the activities of the French left and traces the escalating tensions that led to the significant upheavals of May 1968, illustrating the interplay between cultural production and political movements during this tumultuous period.

Exploring the concept of boredom in modern and contemporary art, this book examines it as a multifaceted experience. It discusses how artists confront boredom, whether by resisting it, embracing it, or using it as a means of exploring deeper themes. Through various perspectives, the text delves into boredom's role as a significant element in artistic expression, challenging traditional notions of engagement and creativity in the art world.

Objects Recognized in Flashes' is the title of a group exhibition focusing on surfaces of photographs, products, and bodies. The exhibition was developed by the curator in consultation with the artists Michele Abeles, Annette Kelm, Josephine Pryde, and Eileen Quinlan. It asks how our largely mediatized society deals with and relates analogue and digital images. How are relations between material and immateriality, body, screen and photographic surface constituted? In our contemporary consumer culture, products and questions of commodity aesthetics are becoming more and more significant. This is not without consequences for our use of photographic images. Ubiquitous advertising, marketing, and product presentation create imaginary visual standards that have now become a firm fixture of our self representations in photos on social media platforms. The works by the four artists in the exhibition respond both in respect to each other, and to this changing context.