Today, more people than ever are fleeing persecution and war. Over 68 million people are on the move worldwide, according to the UN's latest figures. With his new book "Migration as Avant-Garde," Michael Danner delivers a moving, critical, and thought-provoking contribution to the current public debate. He skillfully deploys a variety of elements and combines his own photos and texts with historic images. The result is a consistent but multifaceted narrative, which is frequently deconstructed both in terms of design and content. While the title at first seems somewhat bewildering, it becomes self-explanatory in the course of reading the quotations, interspersed throughout the book, from Hannah Arendt's 1943 essay "We Refugees." The events that Arendt wrote about more than seventy years--giving up one's home, one's friends, family, and language--are more pressing today than ever before. In search of progress, driven by the desire for a better future, and risking their lives, people both then and now hit the road, break through physical and psychological boundaries, and thus provide our society with new perspectives and ways of thinking.

The wave of anti-authoritarian political activity associated with the term “1968” can by no means be confined under the rubric of “protest,” understood narrowly in terms of street marches and other reactions to state initiatives. Indeed, the actions generated in response to “1968” frequently involved attempts to elaborate resistance within the realm of culture generally, and in the arts in particular. This blurring of the boundary between art and politics was a characteristic development of the political activism of the postwar period. This volume brings together a group of essays concerned with the multifaceted link between culture and politics, highlighting lesser-known case studies and opening new perspectives on the development of anti-authoritarian politics in Europe from the 1950s to the fall of Communism and beyond.

The cultural liberalization of communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960s produced many artistic accomplishments, not least the celebrated films of the Czech New Wave. This movement saw filmmakers use their new freedom to engage with traditions of the avant-garde, especially Surrealism. This book explores the avant-garde's influence over the New Wave and considers the political implications of that influence. The close analysis of selected films, ranging from the Oscar-winning Closely Observed Trains to the aesthetically challenging Daisies, is contextualized by an account of the Czech avant-garde and a discussion of the films' immediate cultural and political background.

Decentring the Avant-Garde presents a collection of articles dealing with the topography of the avant-garde. The focus is on different responses to avant-garde aesthetics in regions traditionally depicted as cultural, geographical and linguistic peripheries. Avant-garde activities in the periphery have to date mostly been described in terms of a passive reception of new artistic trends and currents originating in cultural centres such as Paris or Berlin. Contesting this traditional view, Decentring the Avant-Garde highlights the importance of analysing the avant-garde in the periphery in terms of an active appropriation of avant-garde aesthetics within different cultural, ideological and historical settings. A broad collection of case studies discusses the activities of movements and artists in various regions in Europe and beyond. The result is a new topographical model of the international avant-garde and its cultural practices.

Cohen traces a history of modernism in migration through the composer Stefan Wolpe, from the Bauhaus to Black Mountain College.

Narrative comprehension, memory, motion, depth perception, synesthesia, hallucination, and dreaming have long been objects of fascination for cognitive psychologists. They have also been among the most potent sources of creative inspiration for experimental filmmakers. Lessons in Perception melds film theory and cognitive science in a stimulating investigation of the work of iconic experimental artists such as Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, Maya Deren, and Jordan Belson. In illustrating how avant-garde filmmakers draw from their own mental and perceptual capacities, author Paul Taberham offers a compelling account of how their works expand the spectator’s range of aesthetic sensitivities and open creative vistas uncharted by commercial cinema.

"This book casts the poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini in a fresh light: his life and work in relation to the visual and performance arts of his time in both Europe and the US. Lavishly illustrated with both documentary and fine art images, it shows how essentially conservative Pasolini was politically and aesthetically despite his reputation as an avant-garde writer and filmmaker. But it also shows how truly advanced Pasolini was when it comes to interdisciplinary art, making him enormously relevant today"--

This collection offers a response to the view that migration disrupts national heritage. Investigating the mediation provided by migrant art, it asks how we can rethink art history in a way that uproots its reliance on space and place as stable definitions of style. Beginning with an invaluable overview of migration studies terminology and concepts, Art and migration opens dialogues between academics of art history and migrations studies through a series of essays and interviews. It also re-evaluates the cultural understanding of borders and revisits the contours of the art world – a supposedly globalised community re-assessed here as structurally bordered by art market dynamics, career constraints, gatekeeping and patronage networks.

Insightful and interdisciplinary, this book considers the movement of people around the world and how contemporary artists contribute to our understanding of it In this timely volume, artists and thinkers join in conversation around the topic of global migration, examining both its cultural impact and the culture of migration itself. Individual voices shed light on the societal transformations related to migration and its representation in 21st-century art, offering diverse points of entry into this massive phenomenon and its many manifestations. The featured artworks range from painting, sculpture, and photography to installation, video, and sound art, and their makers--including Isaac Julien, Richard Mosse, Reena Saini Kallat, Yinka Shonibare MBE, and Do Ho Suh, among many others--hail from around the world. Texts by experts in political science, Latin American studies, and human rights, as well as contemporary art, expand upon the political, economic, and social contexts of migration and its representation. The book also includes three conversations in which artists discuss the complexity of making work about migration. Amid worldwide tensions surrounding refugee crises and border security, this publication provides a nuanced interpretation of the current cultural moment. Intertwining themes of memory, home, activism, and more, When Home Won't Let You Stay meditates on how art both shapes and is shaped by the public discourse on migration.

A historical and comparative analysis investigating two hundred years of migration and citizenship laws in South America.