The Royal Institute of Art / Sternberg Press launch Scandalous: A Reader on Art and Ethics

The Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, and Sternberg Press announce the publication of Scandalous: A Reader on Art and Ethics (ed. Nina Möntmann). A book launch will take place at Iaspis in Stockholm, with presentations by Nina Möntmann and Måns Wrange and a film screening by Renzo Martens.

Recent encounters between art and life, the ubiquity of images of violence and humiliation in visual culture and the media, and the persistence of controversial debates on public and participatory art projects are raising fundamental questions about the importance of ethical decisions in art and curating. How far can provocation in art go, before it becomes cynical and abusive? Does “good censorship” exist? Are ethical decisions seen as more urgent in participatory art?

This reader introduces current notions of ethics in several contexts related to the cultural field. Responding to the instrumentalization of ethics as a privileged tool of neoliberalism, the reader claims the need for an ethics that critically reflects the mechanisms of contemporary global power structures. The contributions discuss models of subjective and situational ethics and pit them against a canon of unquestioned principles and upturned notions of ethics and human rights.

Scandalous : A Reader on Art and Ethics
Edited by Nina Möntmann
Texts by Petra Bauer and Annette Krauss, Franco Berardi Bifo, Galit Eilat, Ronald Jones, Maria Karlsson and Måns Wrange, Nina Möntmann, Peter Osborne, Marcus Steinweg, Nato Thompson; conversations between Simon Critchley and Miguel Á. Hernández-Navarro, Renzo Martens and T. J. Demos

16.6 x 22.5 cm, 178 pages, 16 color and 6 b/w ills., softcover
ISBN 978-1-934105-87-0

For orders, please contact [email protected]