Lanfranco Aceti

Eternally present and eternally absent: the cultural politics of a thanatophobic internet and its visual representations of artificial existences

Abstract Have contemporary digital technologies as well as aesthetic and cultural approaches reinforced the simulacral representations of a thanatophobic society? This essay analyses the processes of data preservation and self-eternalisation that construct personal and social narratives that offer to the individual the illusion of memorialisation and eternalisation. It is in this context that postmodern and aesthetic cultural constructions provide an opportunity for self-musealisation avoiding a sociopolitical questioning of the regime of truth, and allowing, through a constant replay of the image, the construction of the illusion of humanity’s eternal presence.

Artistic Skills Recovery and Compensation in Visual Artists after Stroke

Background Art is a characteristic of mankind, which requires superior central nervous processing and integration of motor functions with visual information. At the present time, a significant amount of information related to neurobiological basis of artistic creation has been derived from neuro-radiological cognitive studies, which have revealed that subsequent to tissue destruction, the artists continue to create art. The current study aims to review the most important cases of visual artists with stroke and to discuss artistic skills recovery and compensation as well as artistic style after stroke. Methods The role of various central nervous system regions in artistic creation was reviewed on the basis of previously published functional studies. Our PubMed search (1995–2015) has identified 10 famous artists with right cerebral stroke as well as 5 with left cerebral stroke who survived and continued to create art after stroke. As the artists included in this review lived at various times during the twentieth century and in different countries, clinical information related to their case was limited. However, it appears that artistic skills recovery and compensation appear within days after stroke. Some of the artists would subsequently change their artistic style. All these elements have been evaluated within the context of specific clinical cases. Conclusion The poststroke artistic skills recovery and compensation with development of a new style or the opposite, regaining the previous prestroke style, represents a significant element of clinical importance in medical rehabilitation as well as neuroesthetics, which requires further evaluation. At the present time, the molecular mechanisms of artistic creation are poorly understood, and more standardized clinical and experimental studies are needed.

The Cuts Have Been Made: What Now? A Look into Current Impressions and Future Developments

This themed issue poses questions concerning financial cuts and their impact on contemporary society and the arts. It presents a collection of perspectives, in particular from Greece, in order to examine artistic and aesthetic practices. It explores how society is being transformed into a post-democracy and how citizens are becoming post-citizens. These transformations will have implications in the redefinition of both post-democracy and post-citizenship as two oppositional forces, which may no longer be reconcilable and could lead to insurrectional and repressive politics. The role that art plays and will play in shaping these discourses by presenting alternative imaginaries to the narratives of the body politic will have to be evaluated in a context of aesthetic concurrence and conspiracy of art. But if the artists are transformed into post-citizens – it may be safe to assume that as post-artists their contributions will be more free – or totally freed – from the restraints and bonds of national and supranational institutions, leading de facto to the production of counter narratives and imaginaries that will be perceived by the post-democracies’ body politic as insurrectional art.

Cuts to Beck’s novel Currency

This is an excerpt from Sarah Beck’s novel Currency. Created as a gift of thanks to the late Kurt Vonnegut, Currency is a humorous story about money, art, fakes and sea pirates. The novel is Sarah’s self-reflexive take on social economic exchanges both within and without the art world. Currency is an odd document – it seeks true interdisciplinarity not just between mediums but in the search for a plurality of possible ways to express and to approach artistic research. Chapter-by-chapter, the self-reflexive narrative guides the reader through musings on the experience of the creation of ephemeral artworks using colloquial language, illustrations, jokes and parables. Written as her master’s thesis, Sarah was obliged to attach an academic explanation, which she has maintained as the last part of her book. Art is a hell of a commodity, and Currency is a hell of a book. Visit sarahbeck.com for more information about Currency and her artistic practice.

The Trader’s Voice: Rick Santelli’s Tea Party Rant

This essay explores the micro-origins of the Tea Party movement, focusing on Rick Santelli’s February 2009 ‘rant’ at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Contrary to populist readings of the movement and its later anti-Obamacare positions, a close reading of the rhetorical and media contexts of the rant demonstrates that its origins lay in a defense of unregulated, untaxed derivative securities. The particular configuration of the HDTV image and viralizable video content contributed to both the power of the rant and the erasure of its particular context.

The Cultural Body's Death by a Thousand Cuts: Why Society Is No Longer a Body and Why It Can Be Cut to Pieces

This essay explores the British, Russian and Greek pavilions at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 and a marginal event that took place at the foundation Prada di Ca’ Corner della Regina during a visit to the exhibition opening of the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. The author examines the relationships between art, money and power as indicators of the tensions of post-democracy, post-citizenship and the increasingly fraught representations of the cultural and social body. The Inhalt (latent content), in an Adornian aesthetic interpretation, is a tool by which to understand the contemporary dismantling of society and the concurrence of art in the sanctioned representations of the body politic. The ‘cut’ becomes the definition and defining element of a contemporary Heideggerian Seinsfrage (the Being), creating the premise for an aesthetic and social discourse that is based on mutilation of the cultural and social body and a re-feudalization of democratic societies.

Revitalizing Debates around Collective Action and Democracy: A Conversation between Oliver Ressler and Bruce Barber

This text is the result of a discussion conducted via email between Oliver Ressler and Bruce Barber during March 2014. The topics were wide ranging and focused upon material presented by Ressler in his invited lecture at NSCAD University as part of the Public Lecture series. Key topics explored in the conversation include Austrian politics, art and activism, interventionism, collaboration, operative and engaged art practice, the ‘coming community’ (Agamben), ‘Dark Matter’ of the art world (Sholette) and specific projects: Robbery (2008), The Bull Laid Bear (2008) What Is Democracy? (2011), and We Have a Situation Here (2011).

Making Inroads: Promoting Quality and Excellency of Contemporary Digital Cultural Practices and Interdisciplinarity

I would like to welcome you to the first special volume of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac. DAC09: After Media: Embodiment and Context , is a volume that generated from the conference by the same name that Prof. Penny chaired at the end of 2009. DAC09: After Media: Embodiment and Context is the first of a series of special volumes of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac that are realized in collaboration with international academic, editors and authors.

Inverse Embodiment: An Interview with Stelarc

What is left of cyborgology today when we are actually looking at an artworld that is in total flux with bio-art, nano-art, data art and an infinite recombinatory matrix of disciplines in which art is the definition of human creativity?