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Re-Politicizing Art, Theory, Presentation and New Media Technology

by Marina Gržinić

While so-called new capitalist global exhibition projects that either include selected Third and Second World artists and their artworks or are organized just for them are developing, so is a subtle system of inclusion and exclusion. These projects demonstrate some important new directions that can be seen not only as conceptual shifts but also as technological ones. Key here is the technique of transfer that provides the means of reproduction. The center (the capitalist First World) establishes hegemonic interpretations of the other worlds. We can detect a dialectical process between the technology of writing and the politics of publishing. Theory and the industry of theoretical writings are precise pyramidal constructions which are carefully safeguarded. Who can publish where and at what time and, moreover, who is positioned to provide the first line of interpretation, are extremely important decisions within the capitalist system. Huge symposia, seminars and panels are organized to support world exhibitions and global cultural projects, circulating the same theoretical personalities and public opinion makers who continually reproduce the capitalist system in theoretical terms. It is perfectly clear that in the field of global contemporary art and culture, we are not dealing with gestures of just exchange and production. We are instead dealing with the delineation of political lines within a certain (public) space, with a codification of this space and a naming of its political subjects. The question is whether, in addition to this process of codification, we also have spaces of resistance?

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New Feminism. Worlds of Feminism, Queer and Networking Conditions

Edited by Marina Grzinic, Rosa Reitsamer, Vienna, Löcker.

This anthology presents and constructs a configuration of acting and fighting for New Feminism by feminists, lesbians and queers. What the editors are interested in is not only opening up this configuration to unknown histories, but also presenting new actors, agents and forces who do not talk only about unknown histories, but first and foremost re-articulate the very foundation of what the feminist movement is. In order to give new power to the movement, it was necessary to open up the history and present of feminism by introducing a certain break (implied by the word “new”), but also to enlarge the agendas of its emancipatory politics.