Since studying with Anthony Gormley and Timm Ulrichs, Josef Rainer (*1970) has created an artistic world theatre made up of incidental and overlooked things, in which perspectives and proportions communicate, big things move out of view, and small things appear on the stage. In his new book, the honeycomb architecture of bees, shrunken human beings in urban surroundings, speaking busts, and reading primates encounter one another. Supplemented by forays into mythology, the history of human development, science, and politics, all of this forms the material for a wondrous 'art chamber' in book form. Text in English, German and Italian.

The Swami Vivekananda's speech to the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 is the centerpiece of Indian artist Jitish Kallat's new work, Public Notice 3. The installation went on view at the Art Institute of Chicago on September 11, 2010, exactly 108 years after Vivekananda delivered his groundbreaking address calling for an end to "bigotry and fanaticism." The text of the speech appears on the risers of the Art Institute of Chicago's Grand Staircase where it is illuminated in the five colors-red, orange, yellow, blue, and green-designated by the United States Homeland Security Advisory System to signify threat levels. This companion book, which documents the installation, is the first full-scale exploration of Kallat's work published by a North American institution. Along with an interview with the artist, essays contextualize Public Notice 3 within the space of the installation and evaluate Kallat's oeuvre within an international context. Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition Schedule: The Art Institute of Chicago (09/11/10-09/11/11)

This book explores how installation art developed into an interdisciplinary genre in the 1960s, and how its special intertwinement of the visual and the performative has acted as a catalyst for the generation of new artistic phenomena. It investigates how it became one of today's most widely used art forms, increasingly expanding into consumer, popular and urban cultures, where the installations' often spectacular appearances ensure that they fit into contemporary demands for sense-provoking and immersive cultural experiences. Making an important contribution to the development of the critical and theoretical discourse on installation art, Ring Petersen addresses a series of basic questions: What is an installation? What techniques does it employ? How does installation art affect its viewers? How can we explain the rise of installation art in a cultural-historical perspective? Answers to these questions are pursued through analyses of installation art's spatial, temporal and discursive aspects as well as its reception aesthetics and cultural-historical contexts, and through analyses of a large number of works from a variety of sub-genres, including performance installations, video installations, installational exhibitions and recent use of installation in commercial contexts, including by artists such as Bruce Nauman, Olafur Eliasson, Mona Hatoum, Pipilotti Rist, Ilya Kabakov, Superflex, Thomas Hirschhorn, Carsten Hoeller, Terike Haapoja and ART + COM.

Renowned Japanese-Swiss artist Leiko Ikemura’s multifaceted oeuvre comprises paintings, watercolours, drawings, as well as terra-cotta and bronze sculptures. She has created a diverse cultural universe that acts as an intermediary between Western and Asian culture. Ikemura is known, above all, for her sculptural works. Her hybrid creatures, seemingly archaic, oscillate between human, animal and plant like shapes. Sometimes childlike or feminine in appearance, the figures and their peculiar physiognomy evoke moments of calm reflection and deep emotion; at times they gesture towards vulnerability and pain, at others they symbolise bliss and dreaminess. This title introduces Ikemura’s most recent installation: six sculptures displayed in the open air at Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences, an ensemble of buildings and parkland designed by Santiago Calatrava. Large-format photographs bear witness to the unreal, almost dreamlike dialogue between the sculptures and Calavatra’s iconic architecture, while the inclusion of works unrelated to this project offers a comprehensive introduction to Ikemura’s unique visual universe. Text in English, German and Spanish.

An illustrated examination of one of Hirschhorn's "precarious" monuments, now dismantled. Part-text, part-sculpture, part-architecture, part-junk heap, Thomas Hirschhorn's often monumental but precarious works offer a commentary on the spectacle of late-capitalist consumerism and the global proliferation of commodities. Made from ephemeral materials-cardboard, foil, plastic bags, and packing tape-that the artist describes as "universal, economic, inclusive, and [without] any plus-value," these works also engage issues of justice, power, and moral responsibility. Hirschhorn (born in Switzerland in 1957) often chooses to place his work in non-art settings, saying that he wants it to "fight for its own existence." In this book, Anna Dezeuze offers a generously illustrated examination of Hirschhorn's Deleuze Monument (2000), the second in his series of four Monuments. Deleuze Monument-a sculpture, an altar, and a library dedicated to Gilles Deleuze-was conceived as a work open to visitors twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Part of the exhibition "La Beaute" in Avignon, Deleuze Monument was controversial from the start, and it was dismantled two months before the end of the exhibition after being vandalized. Dezeuze describes the chronology of the project, including negotiations with local residents; the dynamic between affirmation and vulnerability in Hirschhorn's work; failure and "scatter art" in the 1990s; participatory practices; and problems of presence, maintenance, and appearance, raised by Hirschhorn's acknowledgement of "error" in his discontinuous presence on site following the installation of Deleuze Monument.

Ilya Kabakov (*1933) is one of the former Soviet Union's most important and influential international artists today. After the two-volume catalogue raisonne of paintings (2008) and 2017's catalogue raisonne of installations, we are now publishing a complete overview of Kabakov's recent paintings. Different ideas, phases, and styles unfold across the 350 works of art, but the artist's inimitable signature can always be recognised. Visual themes include, for example, the colour white, the relationship between complete and incomplete, and the combination of either various styles or of painting and photography. Still, all of the pieces have one thing in common: they all pursue a conceptual approach and make references to art history.

The KfW Foundation and the cultural centre Kunstlerhaus Bethanien are collaborating on a studio programme offering a twelve month residency in Berlin to young artists from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Verlag Kettler presents the artistic work of the grant holders in an on-going book series. Matheus Rocha Pitta (born 1980 in Tiradentes, Brazil, lives and works in Rio de Janeiro) has created a new group of works entitled For the Winners the Potatoes. At the time of publication, this work an be found at the exhibition room of Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, as well as in two of Berlin's underground stations, Hermannplatz and Gesundbrunnen, and in a showcase at SOX in Berlin's Oranienstrasse. Rocha Pitta's performative installations at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien and in the underground stations allow him to interact with the public. He presents trophies that are made of plastic bags or concrete instead of gold, silver or bronze, and invites visitors to take along potatoes as victory trophies. His work deconstructs the concept of victory and the hierarchy of winners and losers, creating a dense network of historical references going back to Ancient Greece and asking fundamental questions about the meaning of gestures, the community and its value. Rocha Pitta portrays his trophies with a mocking sense of humour. By connecting glory with mundane, everyday objects, he aims to subvert the hierarchy of winners and losers and invites the spectator to rethink the meaning of victory and defeat.

Zadok Ben-David's inspiration derives from nature, science, magic and illusion. From Evolution and Theory (1995), where he explores scientific discoveries, to the psychological installation Blackfield (2007), with thousands of flowers, and the magical The Other Side of Midnight (2013), which incorporates hundreds of insects, one of the characteristics of Ben-David's work is the use of multiplicity as an organising principle. He creates an alternate amplified viewing space where the relationship between viewer (human) and artwork (nature) is both sacred and destabilising. The new ongoing installation People I Saw but Never Met, features thousands of miniatures of people that he has photographed and drawn during his travels, suggesting ways in which we are both isolated yet always close together. Together with outdoor works, completed over a twenty-year period, this new book brings these four installations together for the first time, in all their magical detail.

The artist Dan Graham (b. 1942) has a wide-ranging practice that encompasses writing, performance art, installation, video, photography, and architecture. Throughout his career, Graham has examined the symbiosis between architectural environments and their inhabitants, particularly in his pavilions made of glass and mirrors. His new installation, created for the roof garden of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, addresses current issues about suburban psychology and political surveillance. Graham's work combines landscaping, hedges, and two-way mirrors to create a provocative, immersive experience for viewers. This creatively designed publication includes an insightful interview between the artist and Sheena Wagstaff and focuses not only on Graham's latest commission but also on his previous landscape-oriented installations, providing a focused, fascinating study of one of today's leading contemporary artists. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (04/28/14-11/02/14)

Isaac played a pivotal role in that significant moment in the black diaspora arts, when gay sexuality, masculinity and race exploded into the same visual frame. -Stuart Hall Riot is an intellectual biography of artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien (born 1960), looking at key moments in his career and discussing the influences that shaped them. Julien's trail-blazing career has moved across film and art, documentary, biography, narrative film and multi-screen installation, and has drawn on influences as disparate as silent cinema, cultural studies, Chinese myth and pirate radio culture. Riot is the first career-long overview on Julien, situating his work in the context of his personal and intellectual development: the friendships, mentors, night clubs, films, politics, records and the artworks that informed his practice. The backdrop to Julien's own story is a collage of some of the most important political and cultural events of the past 30 years: Thatcherism and the rise of neo-liberalism, the AIDS epidemic, punk rock, social riots, the globalization of the art market and the movement of filmmakers into the gallery.

British artist Michael Landy (b. 1963) is known primarily as an installation artist. His work, along with others associated with the Young British Artists (YBAs), was first catapulted to the world spotlight when it was featured in the notorious Sensation exhibition (1997). His sculptural installations and performances explore political and social themes, such as the nature of consumerism and commodity. In 2009, Landy began a three-year artist residency at the National Gallery, London. He chose to focus his project on representations of saints and their accompanying stories, often gruesome, which were once part of common culture but are now largely unknown. Landy's preoccupation with recycling narratives and repurposing imagery results in Saints Alive, the subject of this book, conceived to include drawings, collages, and a series of kinetic, interactive sculptures with moving parts and sounds.

The provocative three-part project "Black Mirror/Espejo Negro" by the artist Pedro Lasch encompasses a museum installation, photographs of the installation, and this bilingual book, including many of the photos, the artist's statement, and critical commentaries. The project began as an installation commissioned by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University to accompany the exhibition "El Greco to Velazquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III." In a gallery adjacent to the exhibit of Spanish Golden Age masterpieces, Lasch placed black rectangular mirrors on the walls, each with an image of a Spanish Renaissance painting behind it. Pre-Columbian stone and ceramic figures, chosen by Lasch from the museum's permanent collection of Meso-American art, stood on pedestals facing toward each mirror and away from visitors entering the room. Viewers were drawn into a meditation on colonialism and spectatorship when, on looking into the black mirrors, they saw the pre-Columbian figures, seventeenth and eighteenth-century Spanish priests and conquistadores, themselves, and the contemporary gallery environment. The book "Black Mirror/Espejo Negro" includes full-color reproductions of thirty-nine photographs of the installation, as well as the text that Lasch wrote to accompany it. In short essays, scholars reflect on Lasch's work in relation to current debates in art history and visual studies, race discourse, pre-Columbian studies, postcolonial theory, and de-colonial thought.

"Contributors." Srinivas Aravamudan, Jennifer A. Gonzalez, Pedro Lasch, Arnaud Maillet, Walter Mignolo, Pete Sigal

A timely photographic exploration of the role of holocaust memorials in Germany. With helpful text, for use by educators and in exhibitions.

The historical roots, key practitioners, and artistic, theoretical, and technological trends in the incorporation of new media into the performing arts. The past decade has seen an extraordinarily intense period of experimentation with computer technology within the performing arts. Digital media has been increasingly incorporated into live theater and dance, and new forms of interactive performance have emerged in participatory installations, on CD-ROM, and on the Web. In Digital Performance, Steve Dixon traces the evolution of these practices, presents detailed accounts of key practitioners and performances, and analyzes the theoretical, artistic, and technological contexts of this form of new media art. Dixon finds precursors to today's digital performances in past forms of theatrical technology that range from the deus ex machina of classical Greek drama to Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk (concept of the total artwork), and draws parallels between contemporary work and the theories and practices of Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism, Futurism, and multimedia pioneers of the twentieth century. For a theoretical perspective on digital performance, Dixon draws on the work of Philip Auslander, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, and others. To document and analyze contemporary digital performance practice, Dixon considers changes in the representation of the body, space, and time. He considers virtual bodies, avatars, and digital doubles, as well as performances by artists including Stelarc, Robert Lepage, Merce Cunningham, Laurie Anderson, Blast Theory, and Eduardo Kac. He investigates new media's novel approaches to creating theatrical spectacle, including virtual reality and robot performance work, telematic performances in which remote locations are linked in real time, Webcams, and online drama communities, and considers the "extratemporal" illusion created by some technological theater works. Finally, he defines categories of interactivity, from navigational to participatory and collaborative. Dixon challenges dominant theoretical approaches to digital performance-including what he calls postmodernism's denial of the new-and offers a series of boldly original arguments in their place.

The first book-length study of this influential artist's work, focusing on the participatory role of the human subject rather than the art object. Michael Asher doesn't make typical installations. Instead, he extracts his art from the institutions in which it is shown, culling it from collections, histories, or museums' own walls. Since the late 1960s, Asher has been creating situations that have not only taught us about the conditions and contexts of contemporary art, but have worked to define it. In Situation Aesthetics, Kirsi Peltomaki examines Asher's practice by analyzing the social situations that the artist constructs in his work for viewers, participants, and institutional representatives (including gallery directors, curators, and other museum staff members). Drawing on art criticism, the reports of viewers and participants in Asher's projects, and the artist's own archives, Peltomaki offers a comprehensive account of Asher's work over the past four decades. Because of the intensely site-specific nature of this work, as well as the artist's refusal to reconstruct past works or mount retrospectives, many of the projects Peltomaki discusses are described here for the first time. By emphasizing the social and psychological sites of art rather than the production of autonomous art objects, Peltomaki argues, Asher constructs experientially complex situations that profoundly affect those who encounter them, bringing about both personal and institutional transformation.

The first monograph on Crispin Gurholt, one of Norway's most prolific and interesting contemporary artists. Gurholt, born 1965 in Oslo where he lives and works, studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Art and at the New York University/Film School SCE. With a background in the film industry--he works as a film and music video director in addition to his artistic practice--Gurholt works with professional specialists in relevant fields, including models, lighting technicians, stylists and special-effects technicians. He has found a method that mixes our understanding of the film medium, the photograph, and relational art's involvement with the public, with symbolism and formal composition borrowed from classical painting. All the main phases of Crispin Gurholt's highly personal style are retraced here from the first tableaux vivant to his last video production, concert performances, and live photo site-specific installation. The monograph is also the catalogue of a 2010 exhibition at the Stenersen Museum in Oslo.

This is the first publication to explore the role of mirrors, spinning, and "neurotic" architecture--a feeling of psychological breakdown--in the work of one of America's most important contemporary artists, Paul McCarthy (b. 1945). The book is published in conjunction with a major exhibition at the Whitney, for which McCarthy is creating two new installations to appear alongside his Bang Bang Room (1992) and two recently rediscovered film loops (1966, 1971). Each work involves a room structure that the viewer can step into and experience-often becoming disoriented as either the floor or entire structure spins, or as walls fold inward and outward. By comparing McCarthy's use of rotational movement and visual effects to that of other artists of the 1960s and 1970s, the author seeks a new understanding of this bold innovator. An interview with McCarthy himself offers an unprecedented discussion of the influences on his art-including experimental filmmakers Stan Brakhage, Stan Vanderbeek, and Bruce Conner. The book not only raises new points but also recovers information and images from films once lost. Distributed for the Whitney Museum of American Art Exhibition Schedule: Whitney Museum of American Art (June 26 - October 12, 2008)