The War Of Appearances- Transparency, Opacity, Radiance

Title: The War Of Appearances- Transparency, Opacity, Radiance
Editors: Joke Brouwer, Lars Spuybroek, Sjoerd van Tuinen
Issued: 2016
Genre: Interdisciplinary theory book
Language: English
Type: Paperback, illustrated, Black & White, Color   
Pages: 212
Dimensions: 16 x 23 cm
ISBN/EAN: 801793-8-7
Design: Joke Brouwer

The transparency model has exceeded the expiration date set by the Enlightenment, having dissolved into a spectral state of global mediation and automation. Art and theory are returning to appearances – not by attributing the flatness of illusion to them, as postmodernism did, but by crediting them with weight and thickness. Today’s war of appearances is one of reality and actuality. In this volume, diverse international authors and artists develop two strategies against transparency: opacity and radiance. At first, the two seem to be mutually exclusive, one holding that thickness is inaccessible because of a fundamental opacity, the other because of an excess of visibility. Yet opacity and radiance quickly begin to overlap in a flickering state of existence, which calls for a spook phenomenology to open up new ways of thinking and seeing.

Authors and artists: Paolo Cirio, Wim Delvoye, Paul Frissen, Graham Harman, Timothy Morton, Luciana Parisi, Matteo Pasquinelli, Tomás Saraceno, Diana Scherer, Willem Schinkel, Lars Spuybroek, René ten Bos, McKenzie Wark.