Witte de With, center for contemporary art, and D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers are pleased to announce book launch events in New York and Los Angeles for Under Fire, volumes 1 and 2.

NEW YORK

Thursday, April 28, 2005, 5 to 7 PM
Printed Matter, Inc.
535 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011
t: 212 925 0325

LOS ANGELES

Saturday, April 30, 2005, 4 to 6 PM
Gagosian Gallery
456 N. Camden Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
t: 310 271 9400

A series of reflections on warfare and representation, Under Fire includes contributions by Akbar Ahmed, John Armitage, Asef Bayat, Ryan Bishop, Benjamin Bratton, Susan Buck-Morss, David Campbell, Hamid Dabashi, Manuel DeLanda, James Der Derian, Madelaine Drohan, Paul N. Edwards, Joy Garnett, Salwa Ghaly, Stephen Graham, Chris Hables Gray, Brian Holmes, Anahid Kassabian, Thomas Keenan, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, Saba Mahmood, Antonio Monegal, Loretta Napoleoni, Amir Parsa, Amit Rai, Harel Shapira, P.W. Singer, Radhika Subramaniam, Ananya Vajpeyi, Ana Valdez, and Eyal Weizman.

Looking at the forms of militarized agencies that are emerging today, Under Fire attempts to understand the nature of emergent power and the forms of resistance to it, situating cycles of violence within the modalities of a global system. It looks at the role that representations play as registers of symbolic meaning and as agents of affective change – exploring the ways that violence materializes as both act and image. It probes into cultural imaginaries of conflict and the deeper truths they may offer about collective identifications and aggressions. It aims to construct a discursive and affective terrain that can offer new insights into symptomatic violence.

The topics covered in these two volumes include the conflux of battle simulation and news programming; democracy and violence; the privatization of the military; the militarization of urban space; architectures and ontologies of targeting; cultures of suspicion; the epistemology of global infrastructures; the exhibition of atrocity; panopticism and disappearance; simulated and imagined constructions of territory; and the corporate use of force.

ISBN Vol. 1: 90-73362-61-X
ISBN Vol. 2: 90-73362-65-2

Distribution in North, South and Central America: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers Inc., 155 Sixth Avenue, 2nd floor, New York, NY 10013-1507, USA
(t) +1 212 627 1999; (e) [email protected]

Distribution in the United Kingdom: Cornerhouse, 70 Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5NH, England
(t) +44 161 2001503; (e) [email protected]

Distribution International: Idea Books, Nieuwe Herengracht 11, 1011 RK Amsterdam, the Netherlands
(t) +31 20 6226154; (e) [email protected]

Under Fire is a project by Jordan Crandall, organized by Witte de With, center for contemporary art, in collaboration with V2_Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam.