Arts of Control
Cultural Production and Systems Thinking During the Cold War
$114.16
- Paperback
320 pages
- Release Date
5 January 2027
Summary
Arts of Control argues that much of the new artistic, critical, and curatorial activity between the mid-1960s and early 1980s was propelled by a fascination with the Cold War sciences of control. Christopher Williams-Wynn reveals the breadth, depth, and variation of cultural encounters with the sciences of control—shorthand for the related disciplines of cybernetics, systems theory, and information theory—that underwrote a widespread turn to systems thinking across institutions and discipline…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262056212 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0262056216 |
| Author: | Christopher Williams-Wynn |
| Publisher: | MIT Press Ltd |
| Imprint: | MIT Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 320 |
| Release Date: | 5 January 2027 |
| Weight: | 369g |
| Dimensions: | 152mm x 229mm |
| Series: | Leonardo |
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Critics Review
ENDORSEMENTS
“Carefully researched and argued, Arts of Control is as equally important to understanding the complexities of Cold War aesthetics as to parsing their continued legacies in the present.”
—James Nisbet, author of Second Site
“Williams-Wynn’s global framing along with meticulous archival and historical work give this readable and insightful study a scholarly longevity and complexity. Its mapping of the contradictory crux of technology’s twin freedoms and prisons speaks poignantly to our present technocapitalist horizons, and the need for cultural producers to critique, resist, and reinvent the systems that inculcate us.”
—Sarah E. James, author of Paper Revolutions
“Breathtaking in scope, this study examines the crossovers and thought-provoking short-circuits that result when artists respond to the control fantasies that undergirded twentieth-century modernization. If systems thinking is invested in aesthetics, art’s own stake in systems is here shown across its full productive range, from optimistic assimilation to creative disruption.”
—Sven Spieker, author of Art as Demonstration
Christopher Williams-Wynn
Christopher Williams-Wynn is an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow in the Department of Art History at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
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