Twelve lessons in fungal activism, Indigenous knowledge and collaboration for artists, gardeners, educators and anyone intrigued by the fascinating life and inspiring metaphors of the mycelium and the mushroom

The enormous popular interest in the world of fungi and the mycelium testifies to its tremendous resonance as a metaphor for new ways of thinking, new systems and behaviors. Taking its inspiration from this world, Let's Become Fungal! looks at a range of Indigenous practices from Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia that are rooted in multispecies collaboration, symbiosis, alliances, non-monetary resource exchange, decentralization, bottom-up methods and mutual dependency--all suggestive of the behavior of the mycelium.
Each of the book's 12 chapters offers teachings on collaboration, decoloniality, nonlinearity, toxicity, mobilization, biomimicry, death and being nonbinary, while also examining the world of fungi. Let's Become Fungal! shows how fungi can inspire artists, collectives, organizations, educators, policymakers, designers, scientists, anthropologists, curators, urbanists, activists, gardeners, community leaders, farmers and others to become more fungal in their ways of working and being.
Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez (born 1984) works as a curator and researcher on art and ecology, and is based in Mexico City. She has founded and directed many international initiatives at the intersection of art and ecology, including the Green Art Lab Alliance (Asia, Latin America and Europe) and the Nature Research Department, the Van Eyck Food Lab, and the Future Materials Bank at the Jan van Eyck Academie (NL).

Fun, poetical and inspiring challenges for teaching the arts--for students of all ages and teachers of all disciplines

The almost 100 arts assignments compiled in this instructive new volume are designed to foster cross-disciplinary creativity in the visual arts, performance, theater, music and design. Everyone who teaches the arts knows the value of the assignment that is seemingly simple but which nonetheless challenges participants, students and pupils to the maximum. In Wicked Arts Assignments the tasks are organized around the following themes: Go Public, Narrate, Remix, Explore Nature, Engage, Soul Search, Make Some Noise, Localize, Build & Move, Keep in Time and Hack.

The assignments can be carried out in various contexts, from primary schools to higher education, from home to online. They are intended to spark the imagination of both teachers and students, contributing to new, topical educational and artistic practices. The book is complemented by a theoretical framework and interviews with experts in contemporary arts and education.

On design's complicity in systems of oppression: critique and exit strategies from the author of The Politics of Design

Our current economic system could not exist without the number systems, coins, banknotes, documents, advertisements, interfaces, typefaces and information graphics that graphic designers have helped to create. Even speculative design and social design play their part in fueling the economic system. Capitalism has brought tremendous wealth, but it has not done so evenly. Extreme income inequality and environmental destruction is the price future generations have to pay for unbridled economic growth. The question is whether ethical graphic design is even possible under such conditions.
CAPS LOCK uses clear language and visual examples to show how graphic design and capitalism are inextricably linked. By sharing examples of radical design practices that challenge the supremacy of the market, it hopes to inspire a different kind of graphic design.
Ruben Pater (born 1977) was trained as a graphic designer and works in journalism, activism, education and graphic design under the name Untold Stories. His work has received several international prizes and he has participated in many exhibitions worldwide. His first book, The Politics of Design (2016), has been an inspirational sourcebook for design students, artists and visual communicators in many different places and contexts; Eye on Design wrote: It's the kind of literature that should be handed out to all students on their first days at art school, along with all the Albers, Berger, Benjamin and Sontag that form the backbone of the design curriculum--an up-to-date assessment of the landscape through which all modern visual practitioners must navigate.

From Arcadia to Guerilla Gardening, Bomarzo to Little Sparta, Roberto Burle Marx to Fritz Haeg, the Anthropocene to Vibrant Matter: a brilliant and radical A-Z of garden history and garden politics

Organized as an inventive abecedarium, On the Necessity of Gardening tells the story of the garden as a rich source of inspiration.
Over the centuries, artists, writers, poets and thinkers from Capability Brown to Derek Jarman have each described, depicted and designed the garden in different ways. In medieval art the garden was a reflection of paradise, a place of harmony and fertility, shielded from worldly problems. By the 18th century this conception had shifted: the garden had become a symbol of worldly power and politics. Today, the Anthropocene, the era in which humankind dominates nature with disastrous consequences, forces us to radically rethink the role we have given the garden historically. As a result, there is renewed interest in the garden among contemporary makers, thinkers and writers, driven not by romantic desire for retreat but rather a call for a new awareness of our relationship with the earth.
Through essays, illustrations and an extensive abecedarium, On the Necessity of Gardening reflects on the garden as an abiding metaphor for society and culture.
Entries include: Anthropocene, Arcadia, Bouquet, Roberto Burle Marx, Compost, Dumbarton Oaks, Edible Estates, Ermenonville, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Herb Garden, Japanese Garden, Derek Jarman, Kew Gardens, Lawn, Park, Quaker Garden, Queer Ecology, Roots, Vita Sackville-West, Versailles, Vibrant Matter and Zen Garden.

In-depth discussions on bootlegging and its myriad definitions in the creative world

Over the last few decades, the term bootlegging--a practice once relegated to smugglers and copyright infringers--has become understood as a creative act. Debates about homage, appropriation and theft, already common in the art world, are now being held in the spheres of corporate branding, social media and the creative industry as a whole. Today, bootlegging has become an aesthetic in and of itself, influencing everything from underground record labels and DIY T-shirts to publishing ideologies and acts of high fashion détournement. Unlicensed, a project by Ben Schwartz, contains 21 interviews with a range of creative practitioners on the topic of bootlegging. Some of these interviews were originally published on the Gradient, the design blog of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where Schwartz began his research on bootlegging. These conversations investigate bootlegging's creative and critical potential, and explore new ways it can be deployed in order to thrive as an impactful cultural force.
Artists include: Line Arngaard, Clara Balaguer, BLESS, Boot Boyz Biz, Akinola Davies Jr., Eric Doeringer, Experimental Jetset, Elisa van Joolen, Czar Kristoff, Hassan Kurbanbaev, Oliver Lebrun, Urs Lehni, Jonathan Monk, Sonia Oet, Matt Olson, Online Ceramics, Mark Owens, Printed Matter (Jordan Nassar and Christopher Schulz), Nat Pyper, Babak Radboy, Hassan Rahim, Shanzhai Lyric, SHIRT, Oana Stanescu.
Ben Schwartz (born 1988) is a graphic designer and editor based in New York. He collaborates with several graphic design studios in the cultural sector across a variety of media. From 2016 to 2018 he served as a Graphic Design Fellow at the Walker Art Center.

Tactics for art world members to advance systemic and just climate solutions

How can art, science and institutional practices counteract the negative consequences of climate and ecological breakdown? Worlding Ecologies serves as both an anthology of case studies and a field guide. 18 scientists, artists, philosophers, activists, theorists and curators rigorously approach urgent ecological challenges including climate breakdown, pollution, biodiversity loss and environmental justice. Together, these voices emphasize the fundamental role of art as a vehicle and support structure for intersectional ecological thought. Structured in three sections--Science and Climate Truth, Activism and Climate Justice and Social Justice in Institutional Ecosystems--this reader unifies the fields of art, science, politics and ecology into a network of synthetic thought.
Contributors include: Federica Bueti, Michael Marder, Ursula Biemann, Victoria McKenzie, TJ Demos, Lisa Doeland, Jessica Ulrich, Christopher F. Julien, Filipa Ramos, Jeff Diamanti.

How urban paradigms of efficiency, sanitization and surveillance transform city life into seamless experience and erode the non-normative

In cities across the world, a new urban condition is spreading rapidly: an ever-increasing push toward efficiency, sanitization, surveillance and the active eradication of any aberration, friction or alternative. From Dubai, Hong Kong and London to Amsterdam and Cairo, the smooth city, with its gated communities and theme-park zones, insidiously transforms urban life into seamless experience. While the demand for safe, clean and well-functioning urban environments is understandable, the ascent of the smooth city corrodes the democratic and emancipatory potential of cities, leaving little space for the experimental and the non-normative. Smooth City investigates the origins, characteristics and consequences of smoothness and points toward possible alternatives.
Ren� Boer (born 1986) is a critic, curator and organizer in and beyond the fields of architecture, art, design and heritage. Based in Amsterdam, he is a founding partner of Loom: Weaving New Worlds and an editor at Failed Architecture.

A hands-on, practical guide to designing fun and accessible art curricula for all ages

Following the blockbuster success of Wicked Arts Assignments, Wicked Arts Education helps teachers and creatives design exciting arts educational programs from scratch. These arts programs foster a meaningful connection between the culture of the student, the arts and society. The included arts educational design strategies have been tested in a variety of settings around the world and were found to be helpful in challenging arts educators to explore curriculum ideas collectively, creatively and productively. In a time of individualization and polarization, this volume underlines the power of collective learning about, in and through the arts.
Though Wicked Arts Education can be used to create personalized learning trajectories, it also advocates building learning communities in which students and teachers share interests, expertise and opinions. Wicked Arts Education can be used in a variety of educational contexts: from primary to higher education, and for arts curricula inside and beyond schools. The book is not only for educational settings, however, but intended for a wide-reaching audience that includes anyone wanting to work collectively with others on a creative project. The term arts underlines that this workbook is suitable for the visual arts, music, dance, theater, film or design, but also for designing interdisciplinary arts projects and courses. So, whether you are an arts teacher, an artist or a curriculum designer, or if you want to set up a single lesson or a complete arts curriculum, this book is not to be missed.

An extraordinary account of the decades-long career of the Netherlands' leading graphic designer, illustrated with over 1,100 images

Gert Dumbar (1940) is one of the most influential--and colorful--graphic designers from the postwar design field, both in the Netherlands and abroad. As a young partner in Tel Design, he designed one of the most iconic symbols in the Dutch public domain--the logo for the Dutch National Railways. Since then, he has opened his very own Studio Dumbar, working on a wide range of projects for an enormously varied clientele, from avant-garde theaters to the central government, from hospitals to multinationals. Gert Dumbar: Maverick Gentleman of Dutch Design considers this fabulously versatile oeuvre in its time and context and examines the various roles Dumbar played: artist, provocateur, design director, student, teacher, cultural initiator and mediator. An abundance of sketches from the studio's archives are included in the book, providing insight into Dumbar's process and his gift for engaging talented young designers.

Over 100 tried and tested exercises to expand how we look at fashion, how we are part of its system and how we can practice fashion otherwise--for students of all ages and teachers of all disciplines

This copious collection of bottom-up activities, prompts and workshops designed by contributors from all around the globe explores fashion in an expanded context. Designers, curators, artists, educators, fashion practitioners, DIY home sewers, students and other creatives responded to the book's open call with contributions that challenge how to practice fashion and reflect on its systems, politics and economics. The exercises collected in this book embrace interdisciplinarity, experimentation and aesthetics, and widen fashion's horizons as a medium for expression, embodiment and sociality. They are gathered under the following themes: Imagining and Dreaming; Going Outside; Using the Body; Working Together; Reading and Writing; Making, Finding, Tracing; Re-viewing Images; Digging Deep; and Sourcing and Re-sourcing.
Radical Fashion Exercises assembles methods for learning and practicing fashion in meaningful, radical and responsible ways. The book is an inspiring tool for design students, designers, writers and practitioners of diverse disciplines to challenge fashion as a commodity and polluting structure in these times of uncertainty and upheaval.
Contributors include: Aïcha Abbadi, Federico Antonini, Claudia Arana, Anja Aronowsky Cronberg, Stéphanie Baechler, Linnea Bågander, Laura Banfield, Anouk Beckers, Mary-Lou, Heeten Bhagat, Dinu Bodiciu, Silvia Bombardini, Chet Julius Bugter, Francesca Capone, Rachael Cassar, Dal Chodha, Lidya Chrisfens, Remie Cibis, Marieke Coppens, Lenn Cox, Eleonora De Chiara, Ashish Dhaka, Paola Di Trocchio, Andrea Eckersley, Aimilia Efthymiou, Chinouk Filique de Miranda, Nicholas Gardner, Abigail Glaum-Lathbury, Julie Gork, Kasia Zofia Gorniak, Marjanne van Helvert, Ruby Hoette, Lou Hubbard, Marie Hugsted, Sanne Karssenberg, Noorin Khamisani, Sonika Soni Khar, Jessie Kiely, Seohee Kim, Anika Kozlowski, Valerie Lange, Ulrik Martin Larsen, Maaike Lauwaert, Alice Lewis, Matthew Linde, Saul Marcadent, Marco Marino, Georgia McCorkill, Kate Meakin, Gabriele Monti, Claire Myers, Udochi Nwogu, Sanem Odabasi, Naoko Ogawa, Oluwasola Kehinde Olowo-Ake, Amanda Cumming & Kate Reynolds, Marco Pecorari, Anabel Poh, Eloise Rapp, Liam Revell, Harriette Richards, Nicole K. Rivas, Todd Robinson, Mikhail Rojkov, Shanzhai Lyric, Sasa Stucin, Sihle Sogaula, Shanna Soh, Vidmina Stasiulyte, Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck, Sang Thai, Anne Karine Thorbj rnsen, Amy Twigger Holroyd, Jeppe Ugelvig, Alessandra Vaccari, Aurélie Van de Peer, Adele Varcoe, Femke de Vries, Ferdinand Waas, Beata Wilczek, Lillian Wilkie, Annie Wu and Patricia Wu Wu.

Three psychological perspectives on the constantly shifting social construct of loneliness

Deep feelings of loneliness can be caused by several internal and external factors, both tangible and intangible. Rather than examining physical structures that have the potential to isolate individuals, The Architecture of Loneliness takes a psychological and sociological approach to the issue of loneliness through three essays. In the first, South African psychologist Wahbie Long explains how foundational experiences during one's childhood can affect adult relationships. French philosopher Marie José Mondzain adopts the vocabulary of architecture as a metaphor for creating an emotional home within which to welcome others. Lastly, French psychoanalyst Lysiane Lamantowicz discusses the contradictory effects of social media, and how these platforms for connection can increase alienation. The Architecture of Loneliness recognizes both the causes and effects of loneliness, and how to connect with others near and far.
Editor Mieke Bal is a cultural theorist, critic, video artist and curator. She writes from an interdisciplinary perspective on cultural analysis, literature and art, focusing on gender, migratory culture, capitalism and political art.

Design and building concepts that pay respect to the land and empower Indigenous communities across the Northern Hemisphere

An Indigenous-led publication, Towards Home explores how Inuit, Sámi and other communities across the Arctic are creating self-determined spaces. This research project, led by Indigenous and settler coeditors, is titled after the phrases angirramut in Inuktitut, or ruovttu guvlui in Sámi, which can be translated as towards home. To move towards home is to reflect on where northern Indigenous people find home, on what their connections to their land means and on what these relationships could look like into the future. Framed by these three concepts--Home, Land and Future--the book contains essays, artworks, photographs and personal narratives that express Indigenous notions of home, land, kinship, design and memory. The project emphasizes caring for and living on the land as a way of being, and celebrates practices of space-making and place-making that empower Indigenous communities.

A guidebook for artists and those aspiring to be artists

Visual artist is a term with manifold variations and meanings. But how, as an artist (or designer, photographer or other independent creator), do you become who you are and who you would like to be? How can you guide your artistic practice? Plan and Play, Play and Plan invites the artist to explore their own questions about their work, using analytical models to help them determine where they stand and what they stand for.

The author Janwillem Schrofer was director of Amsterdam's Rijksakademie from 1982 to 2010, and thus knows from practical experience the complexity of the artist's dilemmas and how important self-reflection is for artistic practice. Looking back over his pedagogical experience and assembling notes and pointers gathered from interviews with a wide variety of artists, Schrofer has developed an appealing guidebook intended for artists and those who wish to become artists.

Case studies at the intersection of art history and queer politics--from landmark exhibitions both institutional and underground to museum policies and art activism

This anthology gathers case studies from the history of queer art exhibitions and their modes of documentation and archiving. The legacy of these projects often depends on personal archives, and consequently public is a relative term for events that were either short-lived, held in domestic spaces or only for those in the know. At the intersection of queerness and contemporary art, this volume considers how the efforts of LGBTQ artists have advanced their public presence in museums and society alike.
Case studies include Storefront for Art and Architecture's 1994 Queer Spaces exhibition and the Cruising Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale; the Queer Kharkiv School of Photography; Martha Rosler's Dia exhibition If you lived here; the Canadian musician Peaches' exhibitions; Untold Stories, Estonia's first queer group exhibition; exhibitions on HIV/AIDS in German-speaking countries and France; queer artists and curators in Croatia; crip theory's intersection with queer studies; a conversation with Sámi artist Katarina Pirak Sikku; and museum policies such as the Guggenheim Transparency initiative, Queer Is Not a Manifesto at the Stedelijk and Queering the Collection at Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven.

A holistic vision of the urban body's metabolic flows, needs and challenges

Difficult problems do not always require far-fetched solutions, but to arrive at the solution a change of perspective may be in order. The City as a System advocates such a change of perspective in the study of the urban environment. It posits that designers who wish to truly improve the functioning of the city and solve tricky urban problems should not only focus on the visible, spatial character of the city, but should also conduct research into its underlying system--into the operation, use and performance of the urban fabric.
The authors view the metabolism of the city as that of a living organism and argue that the urban body--as the place where much of our resource use culminates--plays a crucial role in the transition toward a more sustainable living environment.

From architectural space to narrative dynamics: a brilliant new conception of sculpture's unique modalities

While discussions about installation art or other three-dimensional art forms are widespread, the discourse on sculpture seems to be stuck in historical or thematic frameworks. Drawing from literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis and architecture, Ernst van Alphen explores seven logics of sculpture: the Logic of Inner Necessity; the Logic of Narration; the Logic of Space; the Logic of Volume; the Logic of Assemblage; the Logic of Architectural Space; and the Non-Logic of Singleness. These themes articulate the modalities specific to sculpture in a fresh and brilliant conception. Artists discussed include Carl Andre, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brâncusi, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Michelangelo, Bruce Nauman, Meret Oppenheim and Rachel Whiteread.
Ernst van Alphen (born 1958) is a cultural theorist and a professor emeritus of literary studies at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. He is the author of Failed Images (Valiz, 2018) and Staging the Archive (Reaktion Books, 2014), and the editor of Shame! and Masculinity (Valiz, 2020).

How social cooperation within communities can better the impact of functional, sustainable design

The scarcity of resources, climate change and the digitalization of everyday life are fuelling the economy of swapping, sharing and lending: all of which are in some way linked to a culture of commoning. In this context, commons can be understood as community-based processes that use, collectively manage and organize generally accessible resources, either goods or knowledge.
Commons in Design explores the meaning and impact of commons--especially knowledge-based peer commons--and acts of commoning in design. It discusses networked, participatory and open procedures based on the commons and commoning, testing models that negotiate the use of commons within design processes. In doing so, it critically engages with questions regarding designers' positionings, everyday practices, self-understandings, ways of working and approaches to education.
Contributors include: Rachel Armstrong, Max Stearns, Nathalie Attallah, Yuhe Ge, Juan Gomez, Luis Guerra, Katherin Gutiérrez Herrera, Cyrus Khalatbari, Rilla Khaled, Cindy Kohtala, Torange Khonsari, Álvaro Mercado Jara, Nan O'Sullivan, Victoria Paeva, Sharon Prendeville, Zoe Romano, Gregoire Rousseau, Daniela Salgado Cofré, Elpitha Tsoutsounakis, Eva Verhoeven, Jennifer Whitty.

International scholars and artists show how feminist art and activism can intervene in social processes

The term artivism seems to have become a catchword for any woman's empowerment through the arts. This volume aims to critically dissect this catchword, unveiling the diversity of practices and realities that it comprises.

Representing a range of critical insights, perspectives and practices from artists, activists and academics, Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms reflects on the role of feminist interventions in the fields of contemporary art, the public sphere and politics.

Essayists include: Linda Aloysius, Marissa Begonia, Sreyashi Tinni Bhattacharyya, Marisa Carnesky, Paula Chambers, Amy Charlesworth, Emma Curd, Katy Deepwell, Tal Dekel, Emma Dick, Lior Elefant, Christine Eyene, Abbe Leigh Fletcher, GraceGraceGrace, Alana Jelinek, Sonja van Kerkhoff, Alexandra Kokoli, Elke Krasny, Loraine Leeson, Laura Malacart, Rosy Martin, Alice Maude-Roxby, Kathleen Mullaniff, Louise O'Hare, Tanja Ostojic, Martina Pachmanov , Gill Park, Pune Parsafar, Roxane Permar, Anne Robinson, Stefanie Seibold, Pam Skelton, Mare Tralla, Christina Vasileiou, Camille Waring, Michelle Williams Gamaker and Virginia Yiqing Yang.

On an exemplary case of Indigenous and non-Indigenous conflict and its legacies

The People's Action against the Nordic lt -Guovdageaidnu Waterway (c. 1978-82) radically shook the course of history in the region. Its call to let the river live clamored against the construction of a large dam across the Allt eatnu river in Norway. The action grew to an unexpectedly broad movement of solidarity across civil society--S mi and Norwegian, as well as Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples internationally--in which S mi artists played a pivotal role.

Let the River Flow takes this eco-Indigenous rebellion, the first in Europe and inspirational worldwide, to reflect on events at the time and their correlations with international artists' eco actions today. It is conceived as a reader, and addresses innovations in political organizing, new influences of Indigenous thinking on contemporary politics and the centrality of artists within the constellation of these activities. It also considers other Indigenous artists' protests that happened in parallel to the actions mentioned.

An intersectional approach to design that incorporates one's context and self

The auto-ethnographic turn in design is emerging from a growing recognition of design's capacity to make sense of one's world. This book's first section, Ideas and Dialogues, compiles reflections and conversations between theorists, educators and practitioners on conceptions of auto-ethnography and the self. The second section, Projects and Practices, demonstrates auto-ethnographic approaches.
Contributors include: Anna Aagaard Jensen, Gijs Assmann, Bruno Baietto, Jurgen Bey, Joel Blanco, Théophile Blandet, Jan Boelen, Hsin Min Chan, Chongjin Chen, Meghan Clarke, Adelaide Di Nunzio, Billy Ernst, Hi Kyung Eun, Teresa Fernández-Pello, Andrea Gaspar, Konstantin Grcic, Metincan Güzel, Jing He, Aurelie Hoegy, Hicham Khalidi, Zan Kobal, Lorraine Legrand, Gabriel A. Maher, Micheline Nahra, Thomas Nathan, Miguel Parrrra, Timo de Rijk, Marie Rime, Sjeng Scheijen, Bianca Schick, Carlos Sfeir Vottero, Weixiao Shen, Matilde Stolfa, Oli Stratford, Marianne Theunissen, Goda Verikaite, Erik Viskil, Barbara Visser and Ben Shai van der Wal.