Hello list

I would add these books to Teike's recommendations on an
organisational/art/critique theme.

Best wishes

Carey

The Museum as Arena: Artists on Institutional Critique
Ed: Christian Kavgna and Kunsthaus Bregenz
Publisher: Walther Konig, 2001
An important book in terms of its collection of seminal artists' writings on
institutional critique, which of course is not only considered canonical
within 20th century art histories and is very relevant to the Acorn list.

Relational Aesthetics / Postproduction (2 books)
Nicholas Bourriaud
Les Presses du Reel

Profits Over People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order
Noam Chomsky
Seven Stories Press, 1997

The Age of Access
Jeremy Rifkin
2002
This book, which discusses issues of human rights and the loss of the
'public commons' in a flexible, experiential economy (AKA 'access society')
in which power relations are played out through questions of access (access
to credit, citizenship, paid-for experiences) rather than the ownership of
property. It is particularly relevant to the Acorn list in the second half,
in which Rifkin discusses the social value of art in terms of promoting a
sense of community and political and social engagement. Nevertheless his
discussion does not instrumentalise art, artists or artistic activity, which
is somewhat refreshing...

Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth
By Gitta Sereny
Picador, 1996
This last because Speer, as Hitler's architect, consistently used his
identity as an excuse - ie that a 'creative person' working at any
organisational rank is somehow more innocent of/less complicit in the
outputs and ideology of the organisation she/he is working for. The book is
apposite for the Acorn list and actively taking up such debates about
complicity and ethics (vis a vis art <-> business) are likely to condition
whether more artists/curators etc will be interested to join the Acorn
debate. This book is a fascinatingly complex and labyrinthine journey
through Speer's memories/ false memories of the Nazi period (extensively
interviewed by the historian and biographer Sereny) and she teases out of
him all sorts of discussions on ethics, guilt, love, complicity and the
creative process.



> From: "Teike Asselbergs (Orgacom)" <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: "Teike Asselbergs (Orgacom)" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 16:12:25 +0100
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: literature
>
> Hi all,
>
> Here is a list of literature, also used for discussing organsational themes.
> Somebody had asked me for it and I thought some of you might like to have it
> too. Any additions?
>
> 'J.R.' by William Gaddis -> homo economicus
>
> 'Nice Work' by David Lodge -> overcomming differences in corporate culture
>
> 'Bartleby the scrivener: a story of wall street' by Herman Melville
> -> deviant figures/strategies in organisations
>
> 'Rabbit is rich' by John Updike -> an individual breaks away from the group
>
> -> individual identy <-> group identity
> 'The man in the grey flannel suit' by  Sloan Wilson
> 'death of a salesman' by Arthur Miller
> 'Point of no return' by John P. Marquand
>
> -> the will to believe the corporate gospel
> 'Something happened' by Joseph Heller
> 'Major Barbara' by George Bernard Shaw
>
> -> Darwin in business
> 'The Financier' by  Theodore Dreiser
> 'Babitt' by Sinclair Lewis
> the short story 'The big money' from the book 'USA' by John Dos Passos
> 'The Jungle' by Upton Sinclair
> 'A Connecticut yankee in Kings Arthur's court' by Mark Twain
>
> -> chaos, office politics & stress management:
> 'Office politics' van auteur Wilfred Sheed
> 'The catbird seat' van auteur James Thurber
> 'Typhoon' van auteur Joseph Conrad
>
> -> advantages of dictatorship
> 'The last tycoon' by F. Scott Fitzgerald
>
> -> selling as theatre
> 'Sister Carrie' by Theodore Dreiser
> 'Glengary Glen Ross' by David Mamet
>
> -> imago and reputation:
> 'Ragged Dick' by Horatio Alger
> 'The Cantebury tales' by Geoffrey Chaucer
> 'The way we live now' by Anthony Trollope
>
> CU,
> Teike