Disordered Attention:How We Look at Art and Performance Today

by: Claire Bishop (Author)

Publisher: Verso Books

Publication Date: 11 Jun. 2024

Language: English

Print Length: 288 pages

ISBN-10: 1804292885

ISBN-13: 9781804292884

Book Description

The ways we encounter contemporary art and performance is changing. Installations brim with archival documents. Dances stretch for weeks. Performances last a minute. Exhibitions are spread out over thirty venues. There are endless artworks about mid-century architecture and design. How are we expected to engage with today's diverse practise? Is the old model of close-looking still the ideal, or has it given way to browsing, skimming, and sampling?Across four essays, art historian and critic Claire Bishop identifies trends in contemporary practice - research-based installations, performance exhibitions, interventions, and invocations of modeistarchitecture - and their challenges to traditional modes of attention. Charting a critical path through the lastthree decades, Bishop pinpoints how spectatorship and visual literacy are evolving under the pressures ofdigital technology.
The ways we encounter contemporary art and performance is changing. Installations brim with archival documents. Dances stretch for weeks. Performances last a minute. Exhibitions are spread out over thirty venues. There are endless artworks about mid-century architecture and design. How are we expected to engage with today's diverse practise? Is the old model of close-looking still the ideal, or has it given way to browsing, skimming, and sampling?Across four essays, art historian and critic Claire Bishop identifies trends in contemporary practice - research-based installations, performance exhibitions, interventions, and invocations of modeistarchitecture - and their challenges to traditional modes of attention. Charting a critical path through the lastthree decades, Bishop pinpoints how spectatorship and visual literacy are evolving under the pressures ofdigital technology.