John Hunt Publishing - Zero Books - announces the new title
Towards a Conceptual Militancy Mike Watson Towards a Conceptual Militancy is aimed at the interested art-viewing public, artists, the politically disillusioned, and readers of both European Philosophy, particularly of Speculative Realism/OOP, and Accelerationism. This book calls on the artist to mount a defence of subjective freedom in opposition to the twin objectifying factors of Science and Capital, personified by growing surveillance technology. Presenting the artistic declaration of freedom as exemplary of how the subject might circumvent its objectification, Towards a Conceptual Militancy brings art back into the social sphere following decades of cultural commodification. Author Bio Mike Watson holds a PhD in Philosophy from Goldsmiths College. He lives and works in Rome where he is a critic, theorist and curator. Online: Author Website Endorsements Developing his argument via an array of paradigmatic cases of contemporary political art, Watson reclaims art’s power to defrost the numbness, alienation and endless delay of the decisive moment of struggle imposed on us by various apparatuses of contemporary power and financial capitalism. The comparison of political subjectivity and freedom with Duchamp’s readymade is one of the original insights of the book. Art’s capacity to produce, or, in Watson’s words, to “reclaim our subjectivity through an act of creative imagination”, here and now, points to some potential ways out of the contemporary political and aesthetic impasse. Alexei Penzin (Chto Delat?) Promotional Plans Author blog and social media. Art and philosophy media: Frieze, Art Review, Art Agenda. USP Addresses recent wave in art activism. Radicalises art and makes politics creative again. Categories ART(ART008000) -> Conceptual(ART008000) PHILOSOPHY(PHI001000) -> Aesthetics(PHI001000) PHILOSOPHY(PHI019000) -> Political(PHI019000)	Publication Date May 2016 Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78099-231-0 $14.95  |  £9.99 8.5x5.5 inches | 216x140 mm 120PP e-book ISBN: 978-1-78535-040-5 $9.99  |  £6.99 Library of Congress 2015952167
Distributed to the trade by National Book Network in US; by Orca Marston in UK Publisher contact: [email protected] zero-books.net