New Book: Utopia Pulse

This is a politically important book for anyone living on planet earth to read, Marge Piercy

Escaping what feels like the inevitable end of the planet requires a certain kind of leap of the imagination. This book features the voices of many of today’s amazing artists – not the desultory market-driven ones, but those that represent a thoughtful world-concerned vast multitude – whose work points toward a much-needed horizon of possibility, Nato Thompson.

The politics of Utopia have already produced a rich and varied literature – St. Simon, Buber, Bloch, and many others. Utopian Pulse explores this tradition from the perspective of art practice and asks how we can engage with and contribute to it. This book will be published alongside an exhibition of the same name and will include artwork from the exhibition itself.

The work’s contributors invoke Utopia as an always incomplete alternative and a recognition of something missing, which opens up the possibility of asserting something which is not yet but will be. International artistic researchers, artists and artist-curators contribute different modes of engagement which they are already constituting through their own practice. More than just a theoretical treatise, this book is an overview of a series of works and projects that are brought to life and which the book seeks to document.

This book will serve not only as a contribution to the existing literature on Utopia and Utopian politics, but also as an inspiration to artists seeking to realise these ideas through their work. With contributions from Katarzyna Winiecka, Antke Engel, Zanny Begg, Oreet Ashery, Sophie Schasiepen, Christoph Şerefe, Wealth of Negations, Matthew Hyland, Bert Theis, Marina Vishmidt, Nobodycorp – Internationale Unlimited, Dario Azzellini + Oliver Ressler, Alice Creischer, Grupo Etcetera, AND AND AND, Mariam Ghani, Halil Altindere, Fer Nogueira, Pedro G. Romero, Daniela Ortiz, Miguel Lopez, Ines Doujak + John Barker, among others.

Utopian Pulse, Flares in the Darkroom
Edited by Ines Doujak, Oliver Ressler
ISBN: 9780745335964
Extent: 288pp
Release Date: 20 Apr 2015
Size: 230mm x 170mm
Format: Paperback
Illustrations: 80 photographs colour plates.
Order through Pluto Press.