<nettime-ann> Pop or Populus: Art Between High and Low by Bettina Funcke

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

.
Book Launch
Sunday, December 13, 2009, 12pm at Artists Space

Bettina Funcke
Pop or Populus: Art Between High and Low
Translated by Warren Niesluchowsk

With a conversation between Johanna Burton & Bettina Funcke

“In dialogue with some of the most interesting modern and contemporary  
philosophical figures, Bettina Funcke traces the divisions and  
alternations in twentieth-century art between high and low engagements  
with popular forms. She reveals fascinatingly how twentieth-century  
artists not only seek to engage the people but also problematize ‘the  
people' as a political and cultural construct.” – Michael Hardt, co- 
author of Empire and Multitude

“In this far-ranging, muscular book, Bettina Funcke persuasively  
argues for a renewed attention to the dialectical relationship between  
high culture and mass culture. Against the notion that the two domains  
have become wholly indistinguishable, Funcke posits a stubborn, even  
agonistic sphere still discernable between them; in her account, it is  
the praxis of “contemporary art” that both embodies and reflects upon  
this condition. Skillfully delivering a complex history of the  
longstanding, slippery debates around hierarchical and repressive  
structures of culture, Funcke moves through two centuries of  
philosophical and art historical discourse.

Tending to canonical—and often contradictory—premises by authors  
including Buchloh, Derrida, Foucault, and Greenberg and to still- 
ambiguous and heavily debated artistic practices like those of Beuys  
and Warhol, Funcke's analysis extends, with great implication, into  
the philosophical and artistic details of our own moment. In Pop or  
Populus, Funcke delivers a cohesive, suggestive narrative that takes  
up the central issues of contemporary culture and refuses to consider  
any history a closed case.”  – Johanna Burton, art historian and  
critic, Associate Director and Senior Faculty, Whitney Museum of  
American Art Independent Study Program, New York.

Bettina Funcke studied philosophy, art history, and media theory at  
the Hochschule für Gestaltung/ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany, and has  
lectured at Bard College, Columbia University, Yale University, and  
the ZKM. Her writings have been published widely, both in artist  
monographs and magazines including Afterall, Artforum, Bookforum,  
Public, and Texte zur Kunst.  A co-founder of The Leopard Press and  
the Continuous Project group, Funcke has worked as an editor at Dia  
Art Foundation and recently as Senior Editor U.S., Parkett.

For further information: www.sternberg-press.com




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