Description
An argument against the "ambient turn" in contemporary art.
About the Author
Seth Kim-Cohen is Assistant Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA.
Reviews
As an entreaty to sound artists and gallerists to think discursively about the artistic production of ambience, Kim-Cohen's Against Ambience is a necessary and timely intervention. It should be read by anyone with a serious investment in the creation or presentation of 'sound art' or 'environmental' art installations. As aesthetic theory, the essay is at once discursively productive, cognitively stimulating, well organized, linguistically playful without indulgence, and frequently razor-sharp in its dissection of concepts ... The art world could use more ethical appeals such as Kim-Cohen's, and his clarion call in Against Ambience justly deserves amplification. * Twentieth-Century Music *
This fantastic new collection of essays confirms that Seth Kim-Cohen writes about sound and unsound, sense and nonsense, like no one else. Kim-Cohen polarizes-not just his readers, but his subjects and, inevitably, himself. The Big One-Thing is always cracked in two. Easy magic can't get a break. But make no mistake. Kim-Cohen is a lover of intensities: litany becomes a hard bright joy, pleasure heaves its darkness into view. That love of intensity- faith, really-is what lets him break down the 'superjoke' of rock 'n roll without spoiling its punchline. An astonishing feat. We could all take a page. * Seth Brodsky, Assistant Professor of Music and the Humanities, The University of Chicago, USA *
Against Ambience and Other Essays is like one of those bombs the anarchists dreamed of back at the birth of modernism: exploding whole worlds with a single throw. In their case, some wood panelling was splintered, tuxedoes were spoiled, and a few (usually the wrong) people injured. But Kim-Cohen here, once again, pulls off the more utopian dream-and with aplomb. * Craig Dworkin, Professor of English at the University of Utah, USA *
[Against Ambience and Other Essays is] a polemical air horn that might just wake celebrants of ambient art from their nostalgic dream of decontextualized sensory immersion. * Lytle Shaw, Professor of English, New York University, USA *
Book Information
ISBN 9781501310324
Author Seth Kim-Cohen
Format Paperback
Page Count 208
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic USA
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Weight(grams) 286g