« Art Critics' Reading List
MARISOL SALANOVA
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Marisol Salanova is a philosopher, independent curator and director of Micromegas, a Spanish publishing house devoted to essays about contemporary art. She is a member of the research group Conocimiento y Estéticas Decoloniales established in Matadero Madrid in collaboration with the Centre for Postcolonial Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research topics include queer theory and the relationships among art, technology and pornography. She has held workshops at the universities of Brighton and Oxford and is the author of Postpornografía, a research book about the post-porn movement. She is currently working on her Ph.D. thesis, El cuerpo abyecto en la performance extrema, at the University of Murcia in Spain directed by professor Pedro A. Cruz. |
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Lorena Amorós. Abismos de la mirada. La experiencia límite en el autorretrato último. Murcia: CENDEAC, 2005.
I have often asked myself if every artist has a self-destructive wish. Amorós explores the different forms of self-representation in order to determine, among other things, if there is a death wish in the Freudian sense that envelops the practice of art. From Frida Kahlo and Gina Pane to Orlan, Burden, Stelarc, Nitsch, Athey and Abramović, the author develops a philosophical approach, which relies on thinkers such as Bataille, Virilio and Beckett to reflect on the pain, the physical quivering, the concept of injury and the eschatological as possible tools for catharsis and regeneration. The allusions to death and bodily fluids connect to my Ph.D. thesis on the abject body in extreme performance. Thus, it is stimulating reading for my work. Written with a fluidity that contrasts with the denseness of the topics covered, this essay gathers a lot of documentation and correlates it with extraordinary sensitivity. |
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Judith Butler. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
This work is an obligatory point of reference for my research, since it marked the evolution of feminism toward the queer theory and pro-sex feminism, the bases of post-porn as I explain in my work Postpornografía. Butler poses the idea of sex as something natural that has been configured within the logic of gender binarism. This book casts doubt on the status of “woman” or “women” and obliged the feminist perspective to rethink its assumptions in addition to understanding that “women,” more than a given collective subject, are of political significance. This assumes a revolution in the politics of identity. Furthermore, Butler suggests that gender norms function as a mechanism that produces subjectivity, which has served as the basis for a series of groups classified as sexual minorities that are gaining ground, such as the transsexual community. |
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Beatriz Preciado. Pornotopía. Arquitectura y sexualidad en Playboy durante la Guerra Fría. Barcelona: Anagrama, 2010.
At the end of the Cold War, Playboy magazine contributed to the creation of a new stereotype of modern man based on a lifestyle revolving around the bachelor mansion. Preciado analyzes this icon of American culture, which is the most well-known magazine in the world, and offers a Foucaultian analysis of the biopolitics of desire through architecture. It would be a very interesting book to translate into English because of its relevance to the American public. It is a work that provides an in-depth analysis of the Playboy phenomenon. It is a fantastic text for understanding the evolution of architecture: The utopia of the bachelor house establishes a direct relationship between capitalism and masculine identity. I am fascinated by the exploration of pornography from a sociological perspective. In 2010, this book was a finalist for Premio Anagrama de Ensayo, one of the most prestigious essay prizes in Spain. |
