And Another Thing: Nonanthropocentrism and Art

88 Pages·2016·29.533 MB·English

by  Katherine Behar, Bill Brown, Robert Jackson, Emmy Mikelson, Patricia Ticineto Clough

And Another Thing: Nonanthropocentrism and Art
Copyright © 2016 Katherine Behar and Emmy Mikelson. This work carries a Creative
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First published in 2016 by punctum books, Earth, Milky Way.
www. punctumbooks.com
ISBN-13: 978-0692652664
ISBN-10: 0692652663
Library of Congress Cataloging Data is available from the Library of Congress
Front cover image: Zimoun. 25 woodworms, wood, microphone, sound system, 2009.
Video, 55 seconds. Courtesy of the artist and Bitforms Gallery
Back cover image: Regina José Galindo. No perdemos nada con nacer
(We don’t lose anything by being born), 2000. Lambda print on Forex, 67 x 100 cm.
Courtesy of Prometeo Gallery di Ida Pisani, Milan/Lucca
Previous page: Detail of Pantoffel für Pantoffeltierchen
(Slipper for Paramecium), 2007. Micro-sculpture, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist
Copy editing: Lisa Delgado
Book design: Tim Laun
And Another Thing
NONANTHROPOCENTRISM AND ART
KATHERINE BEHAR
EMMY MIKELSON

7 Preface
I. Contexts
11 S pace for Things: Art, Objects, and Speculation
Emmy Mikelson
21 A rbitrary Objects: Minimalism and Nonanthropocentrism
Katherine Behar
II. The Exhibition
34 Curatorial Statement
Katherine Behar and Emmy Mikelson
36 Carl Andre
38 Laura Carton
40 Valie Export
42 Regina José Galindo
44 Tom Kotik
46 Mary Lucking
48 Bruce Nauman
50 Grit Ruhland
52 Anthony Titus
54 Ruslan Trusewych
56 Zimoun
III. Speculations
61 T he Recentness of Things
Bill Brown
69 D emonstration and Description
Robert Jackson
75 T rauma Expanded / Aesthetics Expanded
Patricia Ticineto Clough
83 Acknowledgments
8 AND ANOTHER THING: NONANTHROPOCENTRISM AND ART
Preface
The impetus for this catalogue is an art exhibition, And Another Thing, which took place in
2011. Its focus concerned nonanthropocentrism, one of the primary tenets shared by various
then-emerging philosophies grouped under the mantle of speculative realism.
This volume serves to document that exhibition and to expand on two of its curatorial
gambits: to prioritize art historical contexts for contemporary philosophy (rather than the
other way around), and to apprehend artworks as historically specific objects of philosophy.
This historical orientation distinguishes And Another Thing from more recent art world
attention to speculative realism; both the early exhibition and this expanded catalogue are
intended to highlight that contribution to ongoing interdisciplinary discussions.
The book is organized in three sections. Literally occupying the center of the volume,
in section two, is the exhibition itself, represented by plates of its eleven works. Works
by emerging and canonical figures lay bare the networks of alliances from which this
exhibition builds. As objects in relation, they map a flat ontological field as a discursive
terrain for engendering materially embedded conversations.
The works are, appropriately, flanked by their context. In the first section, two
long-form essays by the curators offer accounts of the evolution of investigations in
nonanthropocentrism and art, spanning eighteenth-century architectural drawing,
performance, minimalist sculpture, and contemporary postminimalism. These essays raise
the stakes for art and speculative realism. We see how, far from responding to philosophy,
artists have figured and prefigured strikingly similar ideas about nonanthropocentrism,
mirroring those now embraced as philosophically “new” realist, materialist, and speculatist
insights. Moreover, in their deep, media-specific investigations, artists speak with
philosophy’s objects on their own terms. 
Art offers object lessons to philosophy, too. Concluding the book, and with an eye to
projects that lie beyond its pages, the third section includes three short meditations on the
relation between nonanthropocentrism and art, and what that relation might portend for
future thought. These essays, by Bill Brown, Patricia Ticineto Clough, and Robert Jackson,
are in a true sense speculative in that they perceive futuritive potentials for theory arising
from nonanthropocentrism’s manifestations in art. As such, they are historically acute
objects that themselves mediate interdisciplinary presents.
We hope that the publication of this volume will contribute to exciting exchanges
between art and theory yet to come.
—Katherine Behar and Emmy Mikelson