Supercommunity: Diabolical Togetherness Beyond Contemporary Art

by E-Flux, Julieta Aranda (Editor), Brian Kuan Wood (Editor)

Leading artists, theorists, and writers exhume the dystopian and utopian futures contained within the present
-I am the supercommunity, and you are only starting to recognize me. I grew out of something that used to be humanity. Some have compared me to angry crowds in public squares; others compare me to wind and atmosphere, or to software.-
Invited to exhibit at the 56th Venice Biennale, e-flux journal produced a single issue over a four-month span, publishing an article a day both online and on site from Venice.
In essays, poems, short stories, and plays, artists and theorists trace the negative collective that is the subject of contemporary life, in which art, the internet, and globalization have shed their utopian guises but persist as naked power, in the face of apocalyptic ecological disaster and against the claims of the social commons.
-I convert care to cruelty, and cruelty back to care. I convert political desires to economic flows and data, and then I convert them back again. I convert revolutions to revelations. I don't want, I want to leave, and then disperse myself everywhere and all the time.-

Genres: Art, Theory, Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction

480 pages, Library Binding

Published December 5, 2017

About the author

e-flux is a publishing platform and archive, artist project, curatorial platform, and enterprise which was founded in 1998. Its news digest, events, exhibitions, schools, journal, books, and the art projects produced and/or disseminated by e-flux describe strains of critical discourse surrounding contemporary art, culture, and theory internationally. Its monthly publication e-flux journal has produced essays commissioned since 2008 about cultural, political, and structural paradigms that inform contemporary artistic production.
http://www.e-flux.com

Reviews

[Pepe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is supposed to be the art work/research from e-flux for the 56th Venice Biennale. I enjoy reading this a lot, as someone who is not familiar with many art discourse. Indeed I was intrigued first by the introduction of Antonio Negri (translated by Matteo Mandarini), but as I kept on reading the anthology of essays, manifesto, lyrics, etc, the book completely captured me. I won't pretend that I understand completely what this supercommunity means. I can only guess that this "supercommunity" is the accumulation of anger, absurdity, and quo vadis-question style within art discourse, in the middle of decaying Earth. It feels like a flux that moves freely, rather unintentionally as the bastard of any ideologies. This flux is not something to be labeled rigidly. According to Negri it is paradoxical progressivism. But one thing for sure, I can sense the accelerationist tone in this preposition. For those of you who enjoy reading Deleuze-Guattarian works, this must be a very nice reading for you.

My favorite pieces include:
- Men of Bronze, Homes of Concrete
- Supercritical Decay
- All works on "Cosmos" chapter with Boris Groys
- Blackout City
- Heart of Britghtness
- Construction with Steel and Technology
- ISIS and the CIA Vie for the Claim to Divinity
- Is There Any World to Come?

[Sandino Acosta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing collection of art pieces that resemble the precariousness of the art work. The fact that it was presented at a Biennale, makes it even more attractive as it calls to insurrection.