Résumé : In Adiós Niño: The Gangs of Guatemala City and the Politics of Death, Deborah T. Levenson examines transformations in the Guatemalan gangs called Maras from their emergence in the 1980s to the early 2000s. A historical study, Adiós Niño describes how fragile spaces of friendship and exploration turned into rigid and violent ones in which youth, and especially young men, came to employ death as a natural way of living for the short period that they expected to survive. Levenson relates the stark changes in the Maras to global, national, and urban deterioration; transregional gangs that intersect with the drug trade; and the Guatemalan military's obliteration of radical popular movements and of social imaginaries of solidarity. Part of Guatemala City's reconfigured social, political, and cultural milieu, with their members often trapped in Guatemala's growing prison system, the gangs are used to justify remilitarization in Guatemala's contemporary postwar, post-peace era. Portraying the Maras as microcosms of broader tragedies, and pointing out the difficulties faced by those youth who seek to escape the gangs, Levenson poses important questions about the relationship between trauma, memory, and historical agency. - Note de l'éditeur

Résumé : A concise yet wide-reaching survey, this book presents visual art in California from the early twentieth century to the present day as a microcosm of the global contemporary, shaped by a compelling network of geopolitical influences, indigenous histories and complex migrations. Art historian Jenni Sorkin celebrates California as a centre of artistic activity whose influence extends far beyond its physical boundaries. Introducing an array of artists and practices, from photography to feminist art, the studio craft movement, Chicanx muralism and Black social activism, Sorkin focuses on art in California as radical, steeped in multiculturalism, ethnic identity, and community involvement. Organized both thematically and chronologically, and illustrated in full-colour throughout, Art in California includes chapters on photography and painting examined through the lens of gender and racial identity; the influence of Mexican muralism; post-war abstraction and the expansion of art education; 1960s cultural and political activism and the rise of ethnic studies; art schools and the alternative space movement, and California-centred biennial exhibitions. As the first introductory text on the subject, this engaging study offers an important reassessment of California’s contribution to modern and contemporary art in the United States and beyond.

Résumé : Cartons d'invitation aux expositions du plasticien reproduits recto verso, en taille réelle, et commentés par le critique d'art Jérôme Sans en association avec l'artiste. ©Electre 2020 Ce livre retrace grâce à près d'une cinquantaine de cartons d'invitation d'expositions personnelles de 2001 à 2019, l'aventure artistique d'Adel Abdessemed, figure majeure de la scène culturelle française et internationale. Face à tous les mouvements convulsifs du monde contemporain, l'oeuvre d'Adel Abdessemed est une forme d'engagement ou d'investissement politique, dans laquelle il est question de résistance et de subversion.Bien plus qu'un panorama rétrospectif de 20 ans de carrière, il s'agit d'une introspective au sein de l'oeuvre de l'artiste qui dévoile à travers un échange avec Jérôme Sans, critique et commissaire d'expositions, complice de l'artiste, une réflexion libre et sincère, faite d'anecdotes ou de citations sur ce que lui inspirent les souvenirs de ces expositions. Se penchant sur ses archives personnelles, sondant sa mémoire, il devient son propre commentateur. Sont mis en parallèle une cinquantaine de cartons d'invitation reproduits recto verso et des vues d'expositions comme autant d'indices d'une riche carrière internationale. Autant de microcosmes graphiques qui ont aussi contribué à écrire et ponctuer l'histoire du parcours d'Adel Abdessemed. 4ème de couv.

Résumé : Résumé éditeur : ""Push: Software Design and the Cultural Politics of Music Production shows how changes in the design of music software in the first decades of the twenty-first century shaped the production techniques and performance practices of artists working across media, from hip-hop and electronic dance music to video games and mobile apps. Emerging alongside developments in digital music distribution such as peer-to-peer file sharing and the MP3 format, digital audio workstations like FL Studio and Ableton Live introduced design affordances that encouraged rapid music creation workflows through flashy, "user-friendly" interfaces. Meanwhile, software such as Avid's Pro Tools attempted to protect its status as the "industry standard," "professional" DAW of choice by incorporating design elements from pre-digital music technologies. Other software, like Cycling 74's Max, asserted its alterity to "commercial" DAWs by presenting users with nothing but a blank screen. These are more than just aesthetic design choices. Push examines the social, cultural, and political values designed into music software, and how those values become embodied by musical communities through production and performance. It reveals ties between the maximalist design of FL Studio, skeuomorphic design in Pro Tools, and gender inequity in the music products industry. It connects the computational thinking required by Max, as well as iZotope's innovations in artificial intelligence, with the cultural politics of Silicon Valley's "design thinking." Finally, it thinks through what happens when software becomes hardware, and users externalize their screens through the use of MIDI controllers, mobile media, and video game controllers. Amidst the perpetual upgrade culture of music technology, Push provides a model for understanding software as a microcosm for the increasing convergence of globalization, neoliberal capitalism, and techno-utopianism that has come to define our digital lives"