Bringing together scholars from a diverse range of disciplines, The City as Target provides a sustained and critical response to the relationship between the concept of targeting (in its many forms) and notions of understanding, imagining and shaping the urban. Among the many spatial and graphic terms used to describe cities in urban studies, the word target is rarely encountered. Though equally spatial, it differs from these others by implying some motive force, and, more than that, a force with some intentionality. To target is to aim, to project, and ultimately to impact. It suggests a space of violence, or at least action, or movement resulting in displacement, which most other terms do not. In that sense it is useful, underused, and perhaps revelatory. Rather than approach the city as simply a site of growth, processes, and developments, the contributors to this volume treat it as the recipient of attentions. The work draws on a wide variety of geographical sites and historic monuments in order to explore this concept, examining and challenging current urban theories. It seeks to highlight both the power of The Global City and the current vulnerability and fragility of urban culture, exploring the city as a recipient and a culprit in relation to issues including terrorism and urban warfare, the latest cyclical failure of global financial markets, and the relatively new spectre of environmental unsustainability. Offering a unique and relevant contribution to the literature, this work will be of great interest to scholars of urban theory, international relations, postcolonial politics and military studies.

Bringing together scholars from a diverse range of disciplines, The City as Target provides a sustained and critical response to the relationship between the concept of targeting (in its many forms) and notions of understanding, imagining and shaping the urban. Among the many spatial and graphic terms used to describe cities in urban studies, the word target is rarely encountered. Though equally spatial, it differs from these others by implying some motive force, and, more than that, a force with some intentionality. To target is to aim, to project, and ultimately to impact. It suggests a space of violence, or at least action, or movement resulting in displacement, which most other terms do not. In that sense it is useful, underused, and perhaps revelatory. Rather than approach the city as simply a site of growth, processes, and developments, the contributors to this volume treat it as the recipient of attentions. The work draws on a wide variety of geographical sites and historic monuments in order to explore this concept, examining and challenging current urban theories. It seeks to highlight both the power of The Global City and the current vulnerability and fragility of urban culture, exploring the city as a recipient and a culprit in relation to issues including terrorism and urban warfare, the latest cyclical failure of global financial markets, and the relatively new spectre of environmental unsustainability. Offering a unique and relevant contribution to the literature, this work will be of great interest to scholars of urban theory, international relations, postcolonial politics and military studies.

A common assumption about cities throughout the world is that they are essentially an elaboration of the Euro-American model. Postcolonial Urbanism demonstrates the narrowness of this vision. The book shows that cities in the postcolonial world are producing novel forms of urbanism not reducible to Western models. Despite being heavily colonized in the past, Southeast Asia has been largely ignored in discussions about postcolonial theory in general considerations of global urbanism. An international cast of contributors focuses on the heavily urbanized world region of Southeast Asia to investigate the novel forms of urbanism germinating in postcolonial settings such as Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Hanoi and the Philippines. Offering a mix of theoretical perspectives and empirical accounts, Postcolonial Urbanism presents a panoramic view of the cultures, societies and politics of the postcolonial city.

A common assumption about cities throughout the world is that they are essentially an elaboration of the Euro-American model. Postcolonial Urbanism demonstrates the narrowness of this vision. The book shows that cities in the postcolonial world are producing novel forms of urbanism not reducible to Western models. Despite being heavily colonized in the past, Southeast Asia has been largely ignored in discussions about postcolonial theory in general considerations of global urbanism. An international cast of contributors focuses on the heavily urbanized world region of Southeast Asia to investigate the novel forms of urbanism germinating in postcolonial settings such as Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Hanoi and the Philippines. Offering a mix of theoretical perspectives and empirical accounts, Postcolonial Urbanism presents a panoramic view of the cultures, societies and politics of the postcolonial city.

The influence of Roland Barthes on Burgin's work is well documented. Equally, Burgin's prominence as an artist and theorist concerned with text and image offers a productive dialogue with Barthes' work. Victor Burgin has long been considered both theorist and practitioner, while Barthes is more known as a theorist and writer. In bringing to the fore Barthes's practice of painting and drawing, Barthes/Burgin prompts a new critical consideration of Barthes/Burgin, theory/practice, writing/making and criticality/visuality. Barthes/Burgin features two new interviews with Burgin, one concerned with his turn to new digital practices and the other a reflection on his reading of Roland Barthes. Also included are images and texts from the artists and an essay critically examining Barthes' exercises in drawing and painting.

In the fields of literature and the visual arts, 'zero degree' represents a neutral aesthetic situated in response to, and outside of, the dominant cultural order. Taking Roland Barthes' 1953 book Writing Degree Zero as just one starting point, this volume examines the historical, theoretical and visual impact of the term and draws directly upon the editors' ongoing collaboration with artist and writer Victor Burgin. The book is composed of key chapters by the editors and Burgin, a series of collaborative texts with Burgin and four commissioned essays concerned with the relationship between Barthes and Burgin in the context of the spectatorship of art. It includes an in-depth dialogue regarding Burgin's long-term reading of Barthes and a lengthy image-text, offering critical exploration of the Image (in echo of earlier theories of the Text). Also included are translations of two projections works by Burgin, 'Belledonne' and 'Prairie', which work alongside and inform the collected essays. Overall, the book provides a combined reading of both Barthes and Burgin, which in turn leads to new considerations of visual culture, the spectatorship of art and the political aesthetic.

Connects Cold War material and conceptual technologies to 21st century arts, society and cultureFrom futures research, pattern recognition algorithms, nuclear waste disposal and surveillance technologies, to smart weapons systems, contemporary fiction and art, this book shows that we live in a world imagined and engineered during the Cold War. Key FeaturesMakes connections between Cold War material and conceptual technologies, as they relate to the arts, society and cultureDraws on theorists such as Paul Virilio, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Friedrich Kittler, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, Bernard Stiegler, Peter Sloterdijk and Carl SchmittThe contributors include leading humanities and critical military studies scholars, and practising artists, writers, curators and broadcastersContributorsJohn Beck is Professor of Modern Literature and Director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at the University of Westminster, London.Ryan Bishop is Professor of Global Arts and Politics, Director of Research and Co-Director of the Winchester Centre for Global Futures in Art Design & Media at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. Ele Carpenter is a curator and writer, and senior lecturer in MFA Curating and convenor of the Nuclear Culture Research Group at Goldsmiths, University of London. Fabienne Collignon is Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at the University of Sheffield. Mark Cote is Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at King's College London.Daniel Grausam is Lecturer in the Department of English at Durham University. Ken Hollings is a writer and broadcaster, visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art and Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design. Adrian Mackenzie is Professor of Technological Cultures at Lancaster University. Jussi Parikka is a media theorist and writer, and Professor of Technological Culture and Aesthetics at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. John W. P. Phillips is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the National University of Singapore. Adam Piette is Professor of English at the University of Sheffield. James Purdon is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of St Andrews.Aura Satz is an artist and Moving Image Tutor at the Royal College of Art.Neal White is an artist and Professor of Media Art at the Faculty of Media and Communication, Bournemouth University.

In Technocrats of the Imagination John Beck and Ryan Bishop explore the collaborations between the American avant-garde art world and the military-industrial complex during the 1960s, in which artists worked with scientists and engineers in universities, private labs, and museums. For artists, designers, and educators working with the likes of Bell Labs, the RAND Corporation, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, experiments in art and technology presaged not only a new aesthetic but a new utopian social order based on collective experimentation. In examining these projects' promises and pitfalls and how they have inspired a new generation of collaborative labs populated by artists, engineers, and scientists, Beck and Bishop reveal the connections between the contemporary art world and the militarized lab model of research that has dominated the sciences since the 1950s.

From futures research, pattern recognition algorithms, nuclear waste disposal and surveillance technologies, to smart weapons systems, contemporary fiction and art, this book shows that we are now living in a world imagined and engineered during the Cold War. Drawing on theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Friedrich Kittler, Michel Serres, Peter Sloterdijk, Carl Schmitt, Bernard Stiegler and Paul Virilio this collection makes connections between Cold War material and conceptual technologies, as they relate to the arts, society and culture.

In Technocrats of the Imagination John Beck and Ryan Bishop explore the collaborations between the American avant-garde art world and the military-industrial complex during the 1960s, in which artists worked with scientists and engineers in universities, private labs, and museums. For artists, designers, and educators working with the likes of Bell Labs, the RAND Corporation, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, experiments in art and technology presaged not only a new aesthetic but a new utopian social order based on collective experimentation. In examining these projects' promises and pitfalls and how they have inspired a new generation of collaborative labs populated by artists, engineers, and scientists, Beck and Bishop reveal the connections between the contemporary art world and the militarized lab model of research that has dominated the sciences since the 1950s.

How does comedy in film attempt cultural criticism? How does cinema use its own visual technology to reflect on and critique its power within both politics and visual culture?
Comedy and Cultural Critique in American Film addresses these questions in detail as it argues for the centrality of comedy in film as a means of staging cultural criticism. Focusing on the powerful and sustained shifts in visual culture that cinema helped to generate, foster and question in the twentieth century, it examines the issues of technology that allow film comedies to engage in self-reflexive cultural criticism and to produce and critique the use of visual technology within US and global cultural politics.
Grounded in the theoretical writings of thinkers such as Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, Friedrich Kittler and Jacques Derrida in relation to repetition, automation, material systems of information media, the level of address in a communicative act, and the shifting role of the image, this book considers comedy as integral for a critical engagement of the constructs of culture. It brings a new perspective to comedy in film, invaluable to students and scholars in Film Studies.

This is the first genuine appraisal of Virilio's contribution to contemporary art, photography, film, television and more. Paul Virilio is one of the leading and most challenging critics of art and technology of the present period. Re-conceptualising the most enduring philosophical conventions on everything from technology and photography to literature, anthropology and cultural and media studies through his own original theories and arguments, Virilio's work has produced substantial debate, compelling readers to ask if his criticism is out of touch or out in front of traditional perspectives. This collection of 13 original writings, including a newly translated piece written by Virilio himself, is indispensable reading for all students and researchers into contemporary visual culture. Key features: a wide-ranging treatment of Virilio's key theoretical concepts and themes from across his work on visual culture so far; surveys Virilio's aesthetics and socio-cultural ideas and how they function within his highly politicised approach to visual culture; examines Virilio's thinking from his first works on war and cinema to his latest theoretical conjectures on art, perception and seeing; contributors include Caren Kaplan, University of California at Davis; Ian James, University of Cambridge; Benjamin H. Bratton, University of California, San Diego, and Tania Roy, National University of Singapore.

In the fields of literature and the visual arts, 'zero degree' represents a neutral aesthetic situated in response to, and outside of, the dominant cultural order. Taking Roland Barthes' 1953 book Writing Degree Zero as just one starting point, this volume examines the historical, theoretical and visual impact of the term and draws directly upon the editors' ongoing collaboration with artist and writer Victor Burgin. The book is composed of key chapters by the editors and Burgin, a series of collaborative texts with Burgin and four commissioned essays concerned with the relationship between Barthes and Burgin in the context of the spectatorship of art. It includes an in-depth dialogue regarding Burgin's long-term reading of Barthes and a lengthy image-text, offering critical exploration of the Image (in echo of earlier theories of the Text). Also included are translations of two projections works by Burgin, 'Belledonne' and 'Prairie', which work alongside and inform the collected essays. Overall, the book provides a combined reading of both Barthes and Burgin, which in turn leads to new considerations of visual culture, the spectatorship of art and the political aesthetic.

Examines the tensions between the aims of military technology and modernist aesthetics in relation to perception. A basic aim of visual technologies is to collapse perception with the perceived object. Modernist aesthetics shows that an irreducible element of time and space always remains. Military technology tends towards the impossible goal of eliminating this dimension; modernist aesthetics exploits it. Placing military operations alongside modernist aesthetics reveals the civic sphere suspended between two incompatible desires. Reading the art and writing of Djuna Barnes, Joseph Conrad, Marcel Duchamp, James Joyce, Mina Loy, Stephane Mallarme, the Italian Futurists and H. G. Wells against Apache attack helicopters, Network-Centric Warfare, satellites, decoys, sirens and radios, this book addresses issues such as targeting, surveillance, visibility and the invisible, broadcast and media, the military body, diasporas, geopolitics and beauty. Key Features * An important contribution to the increasingly important interdisciplinary field of war studies * Original and 'groundbreaking' readings of modernist art, literature, music, poetics and aesthetics * A valuable and provocative new reading of the avant-garde * Contributes to a new understanding of both military technics and modernist aesthetics

How does comedy in film attempt cultural criticism? How does cinema use its own visual technology to reflect on and critique its power within both politics and visual culture?
Comedy and Cultural Critique in American Film addresses these questions in detail as it argues for the centrality of comedy in film as a means of staging cultural criticism. Focusing on the powerful and sustained shifts in visual culture that cinema helped to generate, foster and question in the twentieth century, it examines the issues of technology that allow film comedies to engage in self-reflexive cultural criticism and to produce and critique the use of visual technology within US and global cultural politics.
Grounded in the theoretical writings of thinkers such as Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, Friedrich Kittler and Jacques Derrida in relation to repetition, automation, material systems of information media, the level of address in a communicative act, and the shifting role of the image, this book considers comedy as integral for a critical engagement of the constructs of culture. It brings a new perspective to comedy in film, invaluable to students and scholars in Film Studies.

This book analyses the operation of current state-of-the-art military technology and the experimental art, music and writing of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Modernist aesthetics renders clearer the operations of the vast surveillance and killing machines of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A basic aim of visual technologies is to collapse the sphere of perception with that of the perceived object. Modernist aesthetics, working the same terrain, shows that there always remains an irreducible element of time and space. Military technology tends towards the impossible goal of eliminating this dimension, while modernist aesthetics exploits it. Placing military operations alongside modernist aesthetics reveals the civic sphere suspended between two incompatible desires. Through close readings of the art and writing of Djuna Barnes, Joseph Conrad, Marcel Duchamp, James Joyce, Mina Loy, Stephane Mallarme, the Italian Futurists and H. G. Wells alongside the Apache attack helicopters, Network-Centric Warfare, satellites, decoys, sirens and radios, the chapters address issues such as: targetting, surveillance, visibility and the invisible, broadcast and media, the military body, diasporas, geopolitics and beauty. Key Features: * An important contribution to the increasingly important interdisciplinary field of war studies * Provides original and 'groundbreaking' readings of modernist art, literature, music, poetics and aesthetics * Gives a valuable and provocative reading of the avant-garde * Contributes to a new understanding of both military technics and modernist aesthetics