Résumé : Mexico is in a state of siege. Since President Felipe Calderon declared a war on drugs in December 2006, more than 38,000 Mexican have been murdered. During the same period, drug money has infused over $130 billion into Mexico's economy, now the country's single largest source of income. Corruption and graft infiltrate all levels of government. Entire towns have become ungovernable, and of every 100 people killed, Mexican police now only investigate approximately 5 eases. But the market is booming: In 2009, more people in the United States bought recreational drugs than ever before. In 2009, the United Nations reported that some $350 billion in drug money had been successfully laundered into the global banking system the prior year, saving it from collapse. How does an "extra" $350 billion in the global economy affect the murder rate in Mexico? To get the story and connect the dogs, acclaimed journalist John Gibler travels across Mexico and slips behind the frontlines to talk with people who live in towns under assault: newspaper reporters and crime-beat photographers, funeral parlor workers, convicted drug traffickers, government officials, cab drivers and others who find themselves living on the lawless frontiers of the drug war. Gibler tells hair-raising stories of wild street battles, kidnappings, narrow escapes, politicians on the take, and the ordinary people who fight for justice as they seek solutions to the crisis that is tearing Mexico apart. Fast-paced and urgent, To Die in Mexico is an extraordinary look inside the raging drug war, and its global implications. - Note de l'éditeur

Résumé : Susan Hefuna embraces a wide range of media, including drawing, sculpture, and installation as well as video, photography, and performance. Her textile works are exploring the visual and cultural signifiers that have come to embody her unique inter-cultural identity. The striking graffiti-like textile series Be One triggers varying emotions and feelings and reminds us that all is connected on this planet. This publication presents new textile works, drawings and films such as Angst Eats Soul, Munich, 2016, and Times Square, 2019. Hefuna’s work has been exhibited internationally at institutions and galleries such as the Louvre and Centre Pompidou, Paris, the MoMA, New York, the LACMA, Los Angeles, the Serpentine Gallery, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and at the 53rd Venice Biennial.Exhibition: Biennale d’Architecture d’Orléans 2019, FRAC Centre, Orléans, France (10.11.2019 - 19.01.2020) / Pforzheim Galerie, Pforzheim, Germany (Opening June 21, 2021)

Résumé : "Il y a 50 ans, lorsque le 5 octobre 1970 à Montréal le Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) enlève le diplomate britannique James Richard Cross et demande la libération de prisonniers politiques, c'est la surprise générale. Le FLQ provoque alors une crise dont se servit le gouvernement fédéral, en invoquant les mesures de guerre, pour jeter en prison quelque 400 personnes qui, sans être reliées aux événements, étaient toutes engagées dans des luttes citoyennes. Pour tous ceux qui ont suivi les événements, les médias constituèrent leur principale source d'information. C'est par eux que chacun a pris connaissance du déroulement des faits et gestes des acteurs de la crise, du déchaînement de haine et de mensonges, d'appel à la vengeance et au lynchage provenant d'intervenants de tous les milieux. On constate que le vernis de la civilisation s'estompe rapidement en temps de crise. Un ouvrage passionnant sur un événement sans précédent dans l'histoire du Québec."--Page 4 de la couverture

Résumé : Guatemala holds a dual image. For more than a century, travel writers, explorers, and movie producers have painted the country as an exotic place, a land of tropical forests and the home of the ancient and living Maya. Archaeological ruins, abandoned a millennium ago, have enhanced their depictions with a wistful, dreamy aura of bygone days of pagan splendor, and the unique colorful textiles of rural Maya today connect nostalgically with that distant past. Inspired by that vision, fascinated tourists have flocked there for the past six decades. Most have not been disappointed; it is a genuine facet of a complex land. Guatemala is also portrayed as a poor, violent, repressive country ruled by greedy tyrants with the support of an entrenched elite—the archetypal banana republic. The media and scholarly studies consistently confirm that fair assessment of the social, political, and economic reality. The Historical Dictionary of Guatemala contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Guatemala. - Note de l'éditeur

Résumé : The work of Martha Rosler is perennially incisive, provocative, political, and timely, exploring a range of issues from everyday life and the media to architecture and the built environment, especially as they affect women. Over her prolific career, Rosler has returned to themes of social justice, popular culture, food, gardens and the natural world, and the intersection of aesthetics and ethics. Martha Rosler: Irrespective is the only survey of the artist's vital and enduring work, examining it across media including photocollage, video and film, installation, actions, and books. In addition to a rich array of artworks, this book presents texts by distinguished critics and art historians, and a candid and insightful conversation with the artist. Through her interrogations of the Vietnam War, the War on Terror, feminism, gentrification, and other timely issues, Rosler has persistently bridged art and activism. This important catalogue comes at a moment when work like Rosler's has the power to inspire change

Résumé : "This immersive publication explores the artistic journey of one of today's most prominent conceptual artists, with a specific focus on his groundbreaking series, "Children's Games." Whether he's moving a sand dune in Peru or pushing an enormous ice block through the streets of Mexico City, Francis Alÿs is constantly seeking to decipher complex social, political, and cultural issues in ways that are simultaneously affecting, imaginative and provocative. Highlighting rarely seen source material, this richly illustrated book delves into the impulses behind Alÿs's influential works. Celebrating the breadth and importance of the artist's work, a series of essays by leading scholars and writers look at his studio practice and influences across art, history and literature, revealing new perspectives on his prolific career and ongoing preoccupations. It also examines the most recent iteration of his critically acclaimed series Children's Games, in which he documents children's games from various cultures around the world. From whimsical explorations of everyday life to his engagement with cross-cultural contexts from Latin America to North Africa and the Middle East, Alÿs's work serves as a platform for navigating the world, inviting viewers to engage with the poetic and transformative potential of artistic expression."

Résumé : "William Kentridge, one of South Africa’s most significant artists, has been creating poignant, clever and visually arresting works across a variety of media for more than five decades. He is renowned for his unique charcoal drawing animations, sculptures, drawings and theatre productions, but what this book focuses on is Kentridge’s longstanding relationships with printmaking and poster design. Over the past three years South African art authority and dedicated researcher Warren Siebrits began compiling a five-volume catalogue raisonné of Kentridge’s prints and posters. In this first book, focusing on graphics produced between 1974 and 1990, Siebrits presents the artist’s earliest forays into linocut, etching and monotype printing, to name but a few. While for many artists printmaking is informed by their work in what have historically been considered more valuable media such as painting and drawing, Siebrits highlights that Kentridge’s process has been quite the opposite. This intensive look at Kentridge first and foremost as a printmaker is thus crucial for a comprehensive understanding of his diverse and influential œuvre. The chronology of the prints and posters helps re-establish many lost and obscure tributaries that will be invaluable to those interested in the building blocks of Kentridge’s work."--Provided by publisher

Résumé : How can art and visual theory contribute to the understanding of our current surveillance society? Watched! presents a selection of European artists who relate to current issues of discipline, control and security in our contemporary surveillance society. Surveillance is an expanding part of daily life. Since the start of the new illennium, we have seen major developments in security policies, data collection, software for private use, biometric science, social media, smartphones and technological innovations in other areas of ?smart surveillance?. Parallel to this change that has taken place in all parts of society, critical responses have increased across a wide range of disciplines, one of them being the arts. This publication offers a selection of artistic works and practices that addresses and reflects on issues of surveillance over the past fifteen years.

Résumé : Six video artists, representatives of the bustlingly exciting Turkish media art scene that has been developing the last twenty years, take part in this exhibition. In a Turkey that is getting increasingly authoritarian, they remind us of the value of the free creative art scene. The six artists all use video as a central medium in their art. Being both artists and social activists, they use different ways to get the message across, from Selda Asal’s conceptual installation “House of glass”, CANAN’s compelling storytelling in “Exemplary”, to Nezaket Ekici’s use of video as performance in “Human Cactus”, Çağdaş Kahriman’s documentarist view point in “Rear Window” and Işıl Eğrikavuk’s “Gül”, where the artist is playing around with the audience in a game of fact versus fiction. Savas Boyraz uses a triptych video installation to shed new light on the Kurdish territorial conflict.

Résumé : "Exploring the relationship between visual art and literature in the Romantic period, this book makes a claim for a sister-arts 'moment' when the relationship between painting, sculpture, pottery and poetry held special potential for visual artists, engravers and artisans. Elaborating these cultural tensions and associations through a number of case studies, Thora Brylowe sheds light on often untold narratives of English labouring craftsmen and artists as they translated the literary into the visual. Brylowe investigates examples from across the visual spectrum including artefacts, such as Wedgwood's Portland Vase, antiquarianism through the work of William Blake, the career of engraver John Landseer, and the growing influence of libraries and galleries in the period, particularly Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. Brylowe artfully traces the shifting cultural connections between the imaginative word and the image in a period that saw new print technologies deluge Britain with its first mass media"