Objections, Volume 1: Forms of Abstraction

The object as obstacle or obstruction, and of the artwork as an aesthetic and political objection.Forms of Abstraction engages with abstraction not as a formal option in art, or as an airy theoretical speculation, but as an operational force that has redesigned our world, and continues to do so. What Alfred Sohn-Rethel has called the "real abstraction" of value-form molds the world, and does so in conjunction with the real abstractions of the law and of technoscience. In this first volume, Objections, Sven L tticken takes his cue from the Latin root of object, obiectum--which refers to something put before the subject, something thrown in one's way--pursuing this sense of the object as obstacle or obstruction, and of the artwork as an aesthetic and political objection. L tticken sees artists engaging with materiality and value, with subatomic particles and radiation as well as with the objectification of human and nonhuman organisms. Along the way, we encounter theoretical objects such