What's The Use? Constellations Of Art, History And Knowledge A Critical Reader

Is art only art insofar as it refuses to be useful? Or do art practices serve a broader purpose? We are in an age that has seen the re-drawing of boundaries between state and civil society, with boundless markets, unstable geopolitics and the all-pervasive effects of the Internet. Within this, how do we understand art’s possibility to know the world, to develop our ethics, to express our sense of historical belonging and to be useful? This reader takes as a starting point the premise that art is an integral part of the social, economic and political process and that it is best understood in its dialogue with the social sphere than as a ‘thing in itself’.

504 p, ills colour & bw, 17 x 24 cm, pb, English