Art and Revolution:
Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century
Reviewed by RonAmber Deloney
Throughout the 20th century, art and politics often have had a precarious relationship, particularly in the moments we refer to as periods of "revolution." Austrian art historian and philosopher Gerald Raunig has analyzed this relationship by examining the interdependence of resistance movements and artistic practices throughout the "long" twentieth century.
Starting with the Paris Commune of 1871, where the author manages to reinsert women's activism into French revolutionary history, he meticulously moves from the Soviet avant-garde to Viennese Actionism of the 1960s to today's counter-globalization movement.
Raunig describes the Viennese rebels as a collective of artists and activists, and deliberately avoids drawing a clear line between their two roles. According to Raunig, Actionists developed "action" art by inciting violent reactions among artists, the audience, and the authorities in order to "mobilize the forces of order."
Art and Revolution is an investigation on the revolution, applying Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the revolutionary "machine." The author attempts to understand the revolution by analyzing its components, including new forms of everyday resistance. Raunig takes us back to historic moments and encourages the individual to think forward in a non-linear engagement with history; one that continues the discussion of art and politics, but with a larger set of tools for unpacking theory, history, and artistic practice.
Art and Revolution
Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century
BY GERALD RAUNIG | translated by Aileen Derieg | 272 pp, $17.95 | Semiotexte/Smart Art, 2007
Without Pain or The Search for the Gene Culprits
Without Pain is a murder mystery that depicts the circumstances surrounding the murder of an unidentified woman who is found in the bed of her suspected murderer. The narrative focuses on the relationships between the murder, Nazi concentration-camp crimes, secret genetic experiments conducted on human subjects, and the present-day family relationships of the protagonists. Developments within the novel serve to illustrate the author's personal theories concerning the psychology of hereditary violence.
Rüdiger Opelt is a professional psychologist. His first book, Die Kinder des Tantalus [The Children of Tantalus], outlines the psychological theory of family relationships that serves as an important basis for the ideas developed in Without Pain, which is his first novel.
by Rüdiger Opelt
translated by Lowell A. Bangerter
209 pages | $22.00
Ariadne Press, Riverside, CA, 2007
The Changing Austrian Voter
Contemporary Austrian Studies, Vol. 16
Compared to the late 1970s, when the Austrian voting behavior was characterized by extraordinary stability, low electoral volatility, and high turnout rates, the 1980s and 1990s saw exceptional changes and ruptures elicited primarily by the rise of the right wing populist FPÖ (Freedom Party of Austria). This volume of collected papers investigates the lasting changes in Austrian voting behavior over the past forty years and analyzes causes and consequences for party competition and the electoral process in Austria during the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Günter Bischof is Marshall Plan Professor of History, chair of the History Department, and director of Center Austria at the University of New Orleans; Fritz Plasser is professor of political science and dean of the political science and sociology faculty at the University of Innsbruck.
by Günter Bischof and Fritz Plasser (Editors)
355 pages | $40.00
Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and London, Feb. 2008
