Mieke Bal Bücher

Auch wenn die Kulturwissenschaften gemeinhin als neue Leitwissenschaft innerhalb der Geisteswissenschaften ausgerufen werden, so fehlt es ihnen doch nach wie vor an einer klaren theoretischen Profilierung und an einem fest umrissenen Forschungsfeld. Mieke Bal sucht mit ihrer an dekonstruktivistische wie an ideologiekritische Positionen anschließenden Kulturanalyse dieses Dilemma der cultural studies zu überwinden. Sie schlägt einen entscheidenden Wechsel in der Orientierung vor: den Einsatz von Konzepten als Theorien en miniature, die sie jeweils in enger Verzahnung mit den zu analysierenden Gegenständen entwickelt und klar definiert. Der vorliegende Band, der von Mieke Bal zusammengestellt worden ist, versammelt, neben grundlegenden theoretischen überlegungen, eine Reihe ebenso prägnanter wie weitreichender Einzelanalysen. Sie spannen den Bogen von einer Narratologie des Sammelns über die Semiotik des Ausstellens als eines Exponierens von Argumenten bis zu einer photographischen Lektüre Prousts oder einer ›widersinnigen‹ Geschichte des Barock. Gemeinsam ist diesen Aufsätzen, die hier zum Teil erstmals veröffentlicht werden, nicht nur der Anspruch, die strikte Trennung zwischen Wort und Bild aufzuheben, sondern auch das Plädoyer für eine Erneuerung der Geisteswissenschaften.

"Up into the unknown" is the phrase the architects Colin Fournier and Peter Cook came up with for the futuristic architecture of the Kunsthaus Graz. To this day, this is to be understood as an invitation to explore the limits of the imagination and to test alternative ideas and utopias in a laboratory for art. Since 2003, the Kunsthaus has been an institution without a collection. Today it claims to be a museum. With its architecture of hybrid spaces, site-specific invitations to confrontation and the mission to be a production site for contemporary art, the Kunsthaus Graz is a space and place of potentiality and otherness. Blueprint for a Museum is to be understood as a draft for a museum, a blueprint that simultaneously reflects abstract categories of the institution and resonates with concrete programme concepts. The publication thus follows the idea of experimentation that the Kunsthaus Graz has embodied since its foundation.

Kulturanalyse heißt für Mieke Bal, einem weiten Kulturbegriff zu folgen und theoretische Kategorien, Kunstwerke und gesellschaftliche Praxen gleichermaßen als kulturelle Objekte zu lesen. In diesem Wörterbuch kann man sie nun – Buchstabe für Buchstabe – bei der Arbeit beobachten. Zwischen A wie Anachronismus und Z wie Zapping führen die kurzen Essays in die Kulturanalyse und das interdisziplinäre Denken Mieke Bals ein.

In Exhibition-ism, theorist and artist Mieke Bal develops the idea that exhibiting is a significant form of the contemporary.In an exhibition, visitors are in the actual company of artworks that can perform. This essay considers recent shows of Bal's own video work, and is framed by observations on contemporary sculpture's response to classics of the form. Looking at art as process, Bal makes the case that the being-together-in-time of an exhibition visit encourages and, if the curation is well thought-out, can heighten the sense of the contemporaneity—art being more capable of this than anything else.

A major survey of Dame Laura Knight, first female Royal Academician and popular British artist of the 20th century.Laura Knight (1877–1970) was one of the most famous and popular English artists of the twentieth century. She was the first woman to have a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, in 1965. In the following decades her realist style of painting fell out of fashion and her work become largely overlooked. A new generation has rediscovered her work, finding a contemporary resonance in her depictions of women at work, of people from marginalized communities and her contributions as a war artist.This beautifully illustrated book, which accompanies a major exhibition at MK Gallery, provides an overview of Knight's illustrious from her training at Nottingham Art School at the age of 13 and her time in North Yorkshire and Cornwall, to her visits to traveller communities and a segregated American hospital. It also features her circus, ballet and theatre scenes, paintings of women during the war and her late paintings of nature.The selection of over 160 works combines celebrated paintings with less known graphic and design works, including ceramics, jewellery and costumes that reflect the artist's enduring interest in the everyday activities of people from all walks of life.

"This is the third and final part of the project 'We all laughed at Christopher Columbus', is published by Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and Platform Garanti CAC, Istanbul." --back

Acts of exposure are crucial in cultural studies, as Mieke Bal explores the processes of presenting and revealing the 'truth' behind various cultural objects, from art to literature. The book examines how the rhetoric of persuasion in the humanities claims truth through distinct display conventions. Bal highlights the often concealed structures of power and authority that influence our perception of cultural narratives, urging readers to critically engage with the underlying dynamics of representation and interpretation.

This book emphasizes the importance of production politics, or struggles in the workplace between workers and their employers, for understanding migrant labour regimes in Asia and the Gulf. Drawing from a study of Bangladeshi construction workers in Singapore, as well as on comparative material in the region, Bal shows that migrant labour politics are significantly influenced by the specific form of production politics as well as their variable outcomes. In contrast to contentious politics approaches, this book sheds light on the extent to which migrant labour regimes can be contested by workers and civil society groups and explains the recent rise in migrant labour unrest in the region.