The Hand at Work

Susanne Strtling

ISBN 10: 1644697076 / ISBN 13: 9781644697078

Published by Academic Studies Press, US, 2021

About this Item

Art = New Vision. This formula shaped the avant-garde. With moving images abruptly expanding the boundaries of the visible world, new printing techniques triggering a pictorial turn in graphic art, and literature becoming almost inseparable from visual media, we still regard the avant-garde as heyday for modernism's obsession with the eye. But what are the blind spots of this optocentrism? Focusing on the gestures of giving, touching, showing, and handcrafting, this study examines key scenes of tactile interaction between subject and artifact. Hand movements, manual maneuvers and manipulations challenge optics and expose the crises of a visually dominated perspective on the arts. The readings of this book call for a revision of an optically obscured aesthetics and poetics to include haptic experience as an often overlooked but pivotal part of the making, as well as the perception, of literature and the arts.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781644697078

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Hand at Work
• Publisher: Academic Studies Press, US
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1644697076
• ISBN 13: 9781644697078
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Art = New Vision. This formula shaped the avant-garde. With moving images abruptly expanding the boundaries of the visible world, new printing techniques triggering a pictorial turn in graphic art, and literature becoming almost inseparable from visual media, we still regard the avant-garde as heyday for modernism’s obsession with the eye. But what are the blind spots of this optocentrism? Focusing on the gestures of giving, touching, showing, and handcrafting, this study examines key scenes of tactile interaction between subject and artifact. Hand movements, manual maneuvers and manipulations challenge optics and expose the crises of a visually dominated perspective on the arts. The readings of this book call for a revision of an optically obscured aesthetics and poetics to include haptic experience as an often overlooked but pivotal part of the making, as well as the perception, of literature and the arts.

About the Author

Susanne Strätling teaches comparative literature with a special focus on East European literatures at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research spans from Baroque aesthetics to contemporary media with a special focus on the poetics of the Russian avant-garde.