Delirium and Resistance

On a regular ongoing basis, Create staff will recommend an article, book, or performance that has caught their eye. 

For April 2019, we will focus on Delirium and Resistance: Activist Art and the Crisis of Capitalism, by Gregory Sholette, with an introduction by Kim Charnley and foreword by Lucy R. Lippard.

In the aftermath of the 2016 US election, Brexit, and a global upsurge of nationalist populism, it is evident that the delirium and the crisis of neoliberal capitalism is now the delirium and crisis of liberal democracy and its culture. And though capitalist crisis does not begin within art, art can reflect and amplify its effects to positive and negative ends.

In this follow-up to his influential 2010 book, Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture, Sholette engages in critical dialogue with artists’ collectives, counter-institutions, and activist groups to offer an insightful first-hand account of the relationship between politics and art in neoliberal society. Sholette lays out clear examples of art’s deep involvement in capitalism: the dizzying prices achieved by artists who pander to the financial elite, the proliferation of museums that contribute to global competition between cities in order to attract capital, and the strange relationship between art and rampant gentrification that restructures the urban landscape.

With a preface by noted author Lucy R. Lippard and an introduction by theorist Kim Charnley, Delirium and Resistance draws on over thirty years of critical debates and practices both in and beyond the art world to historicize and advocate for the art activist tradition that radically – and, at times, deliriously – entangles the visual arts with political struggles. (Text from Pluto Press)

Gregory Sholette
Delirium and Resistance: Activist Art and the Crisis of Capitalism
Edited by Kim Charnley
2017: Pluto Press, 290pp
ISBN: 9780745336886