“Back to things!” – This is the new motto of what Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel call an “object-oriented democracy”. For the more than 100 writers, artists, and philosophers assembled in this groundbreaking editorial and curatorial project, politics is not just a profession, sphere, or system, but a concern for »things».
Making Things Public,
Atmospheres of Democracy
Exhibition catalog, Anthology
Author / Editor
Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Eds.)
Publishing house, place
MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Year
2005
Cornel Bierens on MILKproject: Art has decided to involve her- self with the path of milk. It may be surprising, but it is not strange, given that art lives by the expan- sion of her sphere of influence, perpetually renew- ing her perspective. Once, art introduced a new vision of landscape through the act of painting it, or, in other words, seeing it through the frame of a painting, which was then new. Since then and pre- cisely because of its success, what was an innova- tion in its day has now grown hunched and bent, burdened under a mountain of clichés.
In collaboration with researcher Ieva Auzina, this is reason enough for artist Esther Polak to step in, to use milk instead of paint. By charting the path of milk, they once again depict landscape in a new way, entirely different from that of paintings in centuries past.
Viestarts Gailitis on MILKproject: Few things are as pleasant as a landscape in full view. But only the few have a full view of it. The landscape with the Milky Way of pixels speaks its own language and can only be understood by those who know the surroundings. They give meaning to this blind line, and we see it through them. Suddenly the dumb line becomes extremely personal.