Twenty years of experimental art from a globalized China Published on the occasion of the largest exhibition of contemporary art from China ever mounted in North America, organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World explores recent experimental art from 1989 to 2008, arguably the most transformative period of modern Chinese and recent world history. Featuring over 150 iconic and lesser-known artworks by more than 70 artists and collectives, this catalog offers an interpretative survey of Chinese experimental art framed by the geopolitical dynamics attending the end of the Cold War, the spread of globalization and the rise of China. Critical essays explore how Chinese artists have been both agents and skeptics of China's arrival as a global presence, while an extensive entry section offers detailed analysis on works made in a broad range of experimental mediums, including film and video, ink, installation, land art and performance, as well as painting and photography. Featured artists include Ai Weiwei, Big Tail Elephant Group, Cai Guo-Qiang, Cao Fei, Chen Zhen, Chen Chieh-jen, Ding Yi, Geng Jianyi, Huang Yong Ping, Kan Xuan, Rem Koolhaas/OMA, Libreria Borges, Liu Wei, Liu Xiaodong, New Measurement Group, Ou Ning, Ellen Pau, Qiu Zhijie, Shen Yuan, Song Dong, Wang Guangyi, Wang Jianwei, Yan Lei, Yang Jiechang, Yu Hong, Xijing Men, Xu Bing, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Peili, Zhang Hongtu, Zhang Xiaogang and Zhou Tiehai. An appendix includes a selected history of contemporary art exhibitions in China, artist biographies and a bibliography.

"...the best extant map of our sonic shadowlands, and it has changed how I listen."—Alex Ross, The New Yorker "...an essential survey of contemporary music."—New York Times "…sharp, provacative and always on the money. The listening list alone promises months of fresh discovery, the main text a fresh new way of navigating the world of sound."—The Wire 2017 Music Book of the Year—Alex Ross, The New Yorker Music after the Fall is the first book to survey contemporary Western art music within the transformed political, cultural, and technological environment of the post–Cold War era. In this book, Tim Rutherford-Johnson considers musical composition against this changed backdrop, placing it in the context of globalization, digitization, and new media. Drawing connections with the other arts, in particular visual art and architecture, he expands the definition of Western art music to include forms of composition, experimental music, sound art, and crossover work from across the spectrum, inside and beyond the concert hall. Each chapter is a critical consideration of a wide range of composers, performers, works, and institutions, and develops a broad and rich picture of the new music ecosystem, from North American string quartets to Lebanese improvisers, from electroacoustic music studios in South America to ruined pianos in the Australian outback. Rutherford-Johnson puts forth a new approach to the study of contemporary music that relies less on taxonomies of style and technique than on the comparison of different responses to common themes of permission, fluidity, excess, and loss.

The essays assembled in this volume are a thoughtful and lively commentary on Europe after the revolution of 1989. Must revolutions fail? Certainly, the open society has its own problems, not least that of citizens in search of meaning. The Good Society has to square the circle of prosperity, civility and liberty. Social science can help us understand what needs to be done, and intellectuals have a responsibility to initiate and accompany change. All this raises questions for Europe which extend far beyond the all too narrow confines of the European Union.

A landmark global history that makes us rethink how the Cold War ended and our present era was born This book offers a bold new interpretation of the revolutions of 1989, showing how a new world order was forged—without major conflict. Based on extensive archival research, Kristina Spohr attributes this in large measure to determined diplomacy by a handful of international leaders, who engaged in tough but cooperative negotiation to reinvent the institutions of the Cold War. She offers a major reappraisal of George H. W. Bush and innovative assessments of Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl, as well as Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand. But, she argues, Europe’s transformation must be understood in global context. By contrasting events in Berlin and Moscow with the brutal suppression of the pro-democracy movement in Beijing, the book reveals how Deng Xiaoping pushed through China’s very different Communist reinvention. Here is an authoritative yet highly readable exploration of the crucial hinge years of 1989–1992 and their consequences for today’s world.

This volume examines the legacy of the East–West divide since the implosion of the communist regimes in Europe. The ideals of 1989 have largely been frustrated by the crises and turmoil of the past decade. The liberal consensus was first challenged as early as the mid-2000s. In Eastern Europe, grievances were directed against the prevailing narratives of transition and ever sharper ethnic-racial antipathies surfaced in opposition to a supposedly postnational and multicultural West. In Western Europe, voices regretting the European Union's supposedly careless and premature expansion eastward began to appear on both sides of the left–right and liberal–conservative divides. The possibility of convergence between Europe's two halves has been reconceived as a threat to the European project. In a series of original essays and conversations, thirty-three contributors from the fields of European and global history, politics and culture address questions fundamental to our understanding of Europe today: How have perceptions and misperceptions between the two halves of the continent changed over the last three decades? Can one speak of a new East–West split? If so, what characterizes it and why has it reemerged? The contributions demonstrate a great variety of approaches, perspectives, emphases, and arguments in addressing the daunting dilemma of Europe's assumed East–West divide.

Left-wing intellectuals in Britain and the US had long repudiated the Soviet regime. Why was the collapse of the Eastern Bloc experienced as a shock that destabilised their identities and political allegiances then? What happened to a collective project that had started out to formulate a socialist vision different from both really existing socialism and social democracy? This study endeavours to answer both questions, focusing on generational networks rather than individuals and investigating political academic journals after 1989 to paint the picture of a Left deeply troubled by the triumph of a capitalism unfettered by any counter-force.

Europe Thirty Years After 1989 explores what happened in the former socialist countries during the last thirty years and the reasons behind these events. The authors examine how values, memory, and identity have been transforming these countries since the year 1989.