Sculpture Unlimited 2: Materiality in Times of Immateriality

While the first volume Sculpture Unlimited (2011) dealt with the question of how the contemporary field of sculpture can be defined in a useful and stimulating manner against its long history, the second volume looks at the present and future. Once again edited by Eva Grubinger and Jörg Heiser, with contributions by internationally reputed artists and scholars, this volume poses the following question: If we assume that computers and algorithms increasingly control our lives, that they not only regulate social and communicative traffic but also produce new materials and things, does this increase or decrease the space for artistic imagination and innovation? Where is the place of art and sculpture, provided we don't want art to resort to merely maintaining aesthetic traditions?

With sculpture as a leading reference, the contributions address theory, aesthetics, and technology: Do current philosophical movements such as new materialism and object-oriented ontology affect our notion of the art object? Does so-called post-Internet art have a future? And how does the Internet of Things relate to objects and things in art?

Contributors
Aleksandra Domanovic, Mark Fisher, Nathalie Heinich, Mark Leckey, Jean-François Lyotard and Bernard Blistène, Jussi Parikka, Christiane Sauer, Timotheus Vermeulen