Katherine Guinness
is a theorist and historian of contemporary art. She is Assistant Professor of Critical Studies in the Department of Art at the University of Maryland, College Park. Previously, she was Assistant Professor and Director of Art History at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS), where she also served as the academic director of the downtown Gallery of Contemporary Art (or GOCA). She received her PhD from the University of Manchester and is the author of the first academic monograph on German artist Rosemarie Trockel, Schizogenesis, which was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2019, and is co-author of The Influencer Factory: A Marxist Theory of Corporate Personhood on YouTube, which was published by Stanford University Press in 2024. She has been a guest editor for Art Journal Open and is the co-founder of FEARS, the Female Emerging Artist Residency Series, at UCCS.
Katherine has taught in a wide range of departments and programs across the globe, including the University of Sydney (where she taught a class in “Digital Arts” in their Digital Cultures program), the University of New South Wales (where she taught Architectural History), North Carolina State University (where she taught in their Art History and Women’s and Gender Studies programs), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (where she taught a number of First Year Seminars in Art History). She is interested in many topics within contemporary art, all of which she examines with a feminist lens, and is currently working on projects that include: the relation between anesthetics and the history of aesthetic theory; “zaniness” in contemporary Australian performance and video art; death, immortality and digital media in the work of a number of younger video artists; and a project on the political economy and visual culture of social media influencers.
The above image is a meme by @cyborg.asm on Instagram, referencing the article “Do You Really Want to Live Forever,” which was coauthored with Grant Bollmer. The original meme can be found here and the article can be found here.
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CONTEMPRARY ABSURDITIES, EXISTENTIAL CRISES, AND VISUAL ART
(Coedited with Charlotte Kent)
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An edited collection consisting of essays and artworks by distinguished and emerging theorists, artists, and scholars. It explains how our contemporary moment is absurd and how absurdity is a useful, potentially radical tool within the contemporary.
Some have called this an age of absurdity, and as such Contemporary Absurdities, Existential Crises, and Visual Art presents the contributions of artists, theorists, and scholars whose words and works investigate the absurd as a condition of, a tactic for, and a subject in the contemporary.
The absurd is a lens on the disturbances of our moment and a challenge to the propositions about and solutions for the world. The absurd shakes off the paralysis that what we know must be the only thing we (re)produce. Those willing to recognize that and confront it, rather than flee from it, are thereby introduced to the political writ large.
This edited collection adopts ideas and practices associated with the absurd to explain how the contemporary moment is absurd and how absurdity is a useful, potentially radical tool within the contemporary. Critical art allows the absurd a space within which audiences can observe their own tendencies and assumptions. The absurd in art reveals our inculcation into hegemonic belief structures and the necessity to question the systems to which we subscribe. Today we see the absurd in memes, performative politics, and art, expressing theconfusion and disorientation wrought by the endless, emerging crises of our 24/7 relations.
The absurd is a lens on the disturbances of our moment and a challenge to the propositions about and solutions for the world. The absurd shakes off the paralysis that what we know must be the only thing we (re)produce. Those willing to recognize that and confront it, rather than flee from it, are thereby introduced to the political writ large.
This edited collection adopts ideas and practices associated with the absurd to explain how the contemporary moment is absurd and how absurdity is a useful, potentially radical tool within the contemporary. Critical art allows the absurd a space within which audiences can observe their own tendencies and assumptions. The absurd in art reveals our inculcation into hegemonic belief structures and the necessity to question the systems to which we subscribe. Today we see the absurd in memes, performative politics, and art, expressing theconfusion and disorientation wrought by the endless, emerging crises of our 24/7 relations.
Published by Intellect Books
USD 149.95 | 284 pages | Aug 26, 2024
ISBN 9781789389067, Hardback, 244 x 170 mm, 35 b&w illus.
Contributors include: Adam Zaretsky, Andy Holden, Aroussiak Gabrielian, Bager Akbay, Carla Gannis, Charlotte Kent, Dave Ball, Graham Harman, Grant Bollmer, Jennifer Lyn Morone, Katherine Guinness, Maggie Hennefeld, Mary Mattingly, Mary Ann Caws, and the Janks Collective Archives (Jerstin Crosby, Ben Kinsley, and Jessica Langley)
Purchase from the publisher here
USD 149.95 | 284 pages | Aug 26, 2024
ISBN 9781789389067, Hardback, 244 x 170 mm, 35 b&w illus.
Contributors include: Adam Zaretsky, Andy Holden, Aroussiak Gabrielian, Bager Akbay, Carla Gannis, Charlotte Kent, Dave Ball, Graham Harman, Grant Bollmer, Jennifer Lyn Morone, Katherine Guinness, Maggie Hennefeld, Mary Mattingly, Mary Ann Caws, and the Janks Collective Archives (Jerstin Crosby, Ben Kinsley, and Jessica Langley)
Purchase from the publisher here