In early 2024, Antoinette LaFarge and I will release our book Engaging the Margins: Experimental Practices in Interdisciplinary Art with Brill. The book features in-depth conversations with fifteen artists operating at the edge of the field.
At a time when artists around the world are feeling ever greater urgency to respond to the pressing issues of our time — especially globalization and other aspects of late capitalism, genocide and ethnic cleansing, pandemics, and the many consequences of climate change — there is a concomitant urgency to thinking about what constitutes an ethical and meaningful art practice. The artists in this book have been engaging with everything from surveillance technology to home-brewed genetic engineering, from data mapping to speculative design, and they often find themselves operating on the edges of the art world, questioning both where art happens and who controls its circulation. In western culture, artists have always led through their willingness to experiment along the margins of what is socially and aesthetically acceptable; thus an entire volume dedicated to current experimental engagements can offer vital inspiration at this turning point in human history.