An illustrated reader on the fascinating subject of video sculpture, The Paradoxical Object opens up a new genre of artwork. The book aims to give physical form to video, while catalyzing the power embedded in objects. Digital artist Joan Truckenbrod explores the idea that video sculpture creates unique time-based objects with their own behaviors, stories and sound. This process is co-linear, with contemporary cultural studies that illuminate the resonance of objects, and the agency that they perform. In activating objects or sculptural forms, this collaboration of video and object creates an innovative portal for connection with other realms. The Paradoxical Object is an intriguing look into the provocative nature of pairing video projection with real objects, and the resulting continuity and conflicts that arise from such a relationship. The complexity of this connection is open to a range of potential interpretations depending upon the unique character of each viewer.

"Presenting works from the early 20th century to today, The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance examines the notion of stillness as both a performative and visual gesture, featuring practitioners who have constructed static or near-static experiments that hover somewhere between action and representation as they are experienced in the gallery space. The exhibition investigates performance from the perspective of the object rather than the body, examining how performance has reinterpreted traditional artistic media. Stillness and permanence are qualities typically seen as inherent to painting and sculpture-consider the frozen gestures of a historical tableau or the unyielding solidity of a bronze figure. The Paradox of Stillness, however, expands the artwork's quality of stillness to accommodate uncertain temporalities and physical states, investigating works that merge objects with human bodies suspended in motion. Featuring artists whose works include performative elements but also embrace acts, objects, and gestures that refer more to the inert qualities of painting or sculpture than to true staged action, The Paradox of Stillness rethinks the history of performance through its aesthetic investigations into the interplay of the fixed image and the live body"--

The Paradoxical Brain focuses on a range of phenomena in clinical and cognitive neuroscience that are counterintuitive and go against the grain of established thinking. The book covers a wide range of topics by leading researchers, including: • Superior performance after brain lesions or sensory loss • Return to normal function after a second brain lesion in neurological conditions • Paradoxical phenomena associated with human development • Examples where having one disease appears to prevent the occurrence of another disease • Situations where drugs with adverse effects on brain functioning may have beneficial effects in certain situations A better understanding of these interactions will lead to a better understanding of brain function and to the introduction of new therapeutic strategies. The book will be of interest to those working at the interface of brain and behaviour, including neuropsychologists, neurologists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists.

Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression offers a comprehensive reading of the philosophical work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a central figure in 20th-century continental philosophy. By establishing that the paradoxical logic of expression is Merleau-Ponty's fundamental philosophical gesture, this book ties together his diverse work on perception, language, aesthetics, politics and history in order to establish the ontological position he was developing at the time of his sudden death in 1961. Donald A. Landes explores the paradoxical logic of expression as it appears in both Merleau-Ponty's explicit reflections on expression and his non-explicit uses of this logic in his philosophical reflection on other topics, and thus establishes a continuity and a trajectory of his thought that allows for his work to be placed into conversation with contemporary developments in continental philosophy. The book offers the reader a key to understanding Merleau-Ponty's subtle methodology and highlights the urgency and relevance of his research into the ontological significance of expression for today's work in art and cultural theory.

In 'Ontological Catastrophe: }i~ek and the Paradoxical Metaphysics of German Idealism', Joseph Carew delves deep into the complex interplay between Slavoj }i~ek's philosophy and the metaphysical propositions of German Idealism. Carew's book meticulously examines }i~ek's unique blend of psychoanalysis, Marxism, and continental philosophy, offering insightful analyses of the paradoxes inherent in German Idealist thought. Carew's writing is erudite and densely packed with references to key philosophical texts, making this book essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary continental philosophy and its intersections with psychoanalysis. Carew's ability to navigate through }i~ek's intricate ideas while situating them within the broader context of German Idealism showcases his deep understanding of both philosophical traditions. Joseph Carew, a respected scholar in the field of continental philosophy, brings his expertise to this groundbreaking work, shedding new light on the philosophical implications of }i~ek's theories and their connection to German Idealism. 'Ontological Catastrophe' is a must-read for philosophers, academics, and students seeking to explore the complexities of contemporary philosophy through the lens of }i~ek and German Idealism.

Carr maintains that the transcendental tradition, often misinterpreted as a mere alternative version of the metaphysics of the subject, is in fact itself directed against such a metaphysics.

This book is not a merely historical reconstruction of Schelling’s thought; its main goal is to provide a contribution for a better comprehension of the importance of the philosophical quest of the young German philosopher from within, which represents a turning point for the whole thought of modernity. I did not describe the various fields of Schelling’s work, but I pointed out the central position of his Aesthetics, through the analysis of the inner mechanisms of his concepts. This mechanism, in my opinion, shows the reason why an Aesthetic philosophy is possible, and why its origin can be traced to Kant’s Aesthetics (particularly in Kant’s Critique of Judgement) and in the speculations of the early post-Kantian philosophy. The young Schelling’s philosophical problems precede his encounter with Fichte’s philosophy. Schelling discovers these problems, related to Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Wolff, Leibniz and Kant, in the protestant college of the Stift in Tübingen. Fichte confirmed the necessity of an urgent reform of transcendental philosophy, and offered to the young philosopher a philosophical dictionary and an orientation. Schelling exploited these resources with a great degree of autonomy, independence and originality. In these years Hölderlin’s influence on Schelling was much greater. Schelling’s and Hölderlin’s speculations, in these crucial years, were tightly connected.

A fresh and exciting introduction to a huge range of logical, ethical and mathematical paradoxes that will give your intellect a workout that you can't help but enjoy.

In this first critical account of Matta-Clark's work, Pamela M. Lee considers it in the context of the art of the 1970s—particularly site-specific, conceptual, and minimalist practices—and its confrontation with issues of community, property, the alienation of urban space, the "right to the city," and the ideologies of progress that have defined modern building programs. Although highly regarded during his short life—and honored by artists and architects today—the American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-78) has been largely ignored within the history of art. Matta-Clark is best remembered for site-specific projects known as "building cuts." Sculptural transformations of architecture produced through direct cuts into buildings scheduled for demolition, these works now exist only as sculptural fragments, photographs, and film and video documentations. Matta-Clark is also remembered as a catalytic force in the creation of SoHo in the early 1970s. Through loft activities, site projects at the exhibition space 112 Greene Street, and his work at the restaurant Food, he participated in the production of a new social and artistic space. Have art historians written so little about Matta-Clark's work because of its ephemerality, or, as Pamela M. Lee argues, because of its historiographic, political, and social dimensions? What did the activity of carving up a building-in anticipation of its destruction—suggest about the conditions of art making, architecture, and urbanism in the 1970s? What was one to make of the paradox attendant on its making—that the production of the object was contingent upon its ruination? How do these projects address the very writing of history, a history that imagines itself building toward an ideal work in the service of progress? In this first critical account of Matta-Clark's work, Lee considers it in the context of the art of the 1970s—particularly site-specific, conceptual, and minimalist practices—and its confrontation with issues of community, property, the alienation of urban space, the "right to the city," and the ideologies of progress that have defined modern building programs.

In this book, Jos� Luis Berm�dez addesses two fundamental problems in the philosophy and psychology of self-consciousness: (1) Can we provide a noncircular account of fully fledged self-conscious thought and language in terms of more fundamental capacities? (2) Can we explain how fully fledged self-conscious thought and language can arise in the normal course of human development? Berm�dez argues that a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) arises from the apparent strict interdependence between self-conscious thought and linguistic self-reference. The paradox renders circular all theories that define self-consciousness in terms of linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun. It seems to follow from the paradox of self-consciousness that no such account or explanation can be given. Drawing on recent work in empirical psychology and philosophy, the author argues that any explanation of fully fledged self-consciousness that answers these two questions requires attention to primitive forms of self-consciousness that are prelinguistic and preconceptual. Such primitive forms of self-consciousness are to be found in somatic proprioception, the structure of exteroceptive perception, and prelinguistic forms of social interaction. The author uses these primitive forms of self-consciousness to dissolve the paradox of self-consciousness and to show how the two questions can be given an affirmative answer.