Disordered Attention

Author: Claire Bishop

c 1939 to c 1945 (including WW2) | c 1945 to c 2000 (Post-war period) | Theory of art | History of art / art & design styles | Art & design styles: from c 1960 | Cultural studies

Published on 11^th June 2024 by Verso Books in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 272 pages, 46 integrated black & white images
210mm x 140mm | 350g

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 modernistarchitecture - 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.