Index
Table of Contents
Introduction
From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public 14
Excerpt: Jonathan Swift on the Difficulty of Talking with Objects 44
1 Assembling or Disassembling?
A Palaver at Tutuila Samoa, 1883. Two Photographs by Captain William A.D. Acland 48
No Politics Please 54
On Small Devices of Thought. Concepts, Etymology and the Problem of Translation 58
WAI 262. A Maori "Cultural Property" Claim 64
"This Is Not a Facade" 70
An Election in Papua New Guinea 86
Diplomats without Portfolios. The Question of Contact with Extraterrestrial Civilizations 90
2 Which Cosmos for Which Cosmopolitics?
Divisionem sententiae postulare. Self-laceration 100
Good and Bad Government: Siena and Venice 108
Sky, Heaven and the Seat of Power 120
The Pantheon of Brains 126
Transforming Things. Art and Politics on the Northwest Coast 132
"Our Government as Nation". Sir Benjamin Stone's Parliamentary Pictures 142
Excerpt: John Dewey on the Pragmatist Good Government 156
3 The Problem of Composition
Composing the Body Politic. Composite Images and Political Representation, 1651-2004 162
Seeing Double. How to Make Up a Phantom Body Politic 196
JJ 203
Reflections on a Table 204
Excerpt: William Shakespeare on the Parable of the Members and the Belly 206
Issues Spark a Public into Being. A Key But Often Forgotten Point of the Lippmann-Dewey Debate 208
Mission Impossible. Giving Flesh to the Phantom Public 218
InterSections/ZKM. A Project 224
Freedom for Music! Intuition and the Rule 228
Classes, Masses, Crowds. Representing the Collective Body and the Myth of Direct Knowledge 234
Excerpt: Thomas Hobbes on Leviathan 246
4 From Objects to Things
Of Althings! 250
Thing Site, Tie, Ting Place. Venues for the Administration of Law 260
Heidegger on Objects and Things 268
Excerpt: Martin Heidegger on the Etymology of "Thing" 272
Heidegger and the Atomic Bomb 274
100 Suns. Military Photography Collected by Michael Light 276
Things as Res publicae. Making Things Public 280
Things Chinese: On wu 290
Dewey's Transactions. From Sense to Common Sense 292
5 From Laboratory to Public Proofs
Public Experiments 298
Disabled Persons of All Countries, Unite! 308
Public Evaluation and New Rules for "Human Parks" 314
Circulations. A Virtual Laboratory and Its Elements 320
Things under Water. E.J. Marey's Aquarium Laboratory and Cinema's Assembly 326
Wall of Science 332
Making Electrons Public 334
"Actions of Interest" in Surgical Simulators 338
Making Collaboration Networks Visible 342
Making Science and Technology Results Public. A Sociology of Demos 346
6 "The Great Pan Is Dead!"
Viva la Republica Cosmica! or The Children of Humboldt and Coca-Cola 352
Excerpt: Karl Polanyi on Dogs Eat Dogs or the Fable of Sociobiology 358
"Sheep Do Have Opinions" 360
Wolves in the Valley. On Making a Controversy Public 370
About Pigs 380
Chicken for Shock and Awe: War on Words 384
What Is It Like to Be Face to Face with a Great Ape? 388
The Obelisks of Stockholm 396
Coastal Environment Made Public. Notes from the Field 398
7 Reshuffling Religious Assemblies
Reforming the Assembly 404
Arguing with Heretics? Colloquiums, Disputations and Councils in the Sixteenth Century 434
Dominican Constitutions 444
Interfaith Celebrations, a New Rite? 448
An Assembly of Humans, Shells and Gods 454
8 The Parliaments of Nature
Galileo's Traveling Circus of Science 460
Rhine Streaming 474
River Sentinels. Finding a Mouth for the Lot River 478
Water Parliaments: Some Examples 482
River Landscaping in Second Modernity 486
The Lottery of the Sea. A Film in Progress 492
The Path of Milk 494
Milky Way 497
Excerpt: Conference of the Birds by Farid ud-Din Attar 500
9 Which Assembly for Those Assemblages?
The Detroit Industry Murals. Diego Rivera (1886-1957) 504
The Politics of Water. A Dutch Thing to Keep the Water Out or Not 512
A Building Is a "Multiverse" 530
The Architectural Thing. The Making of "Making Things Public" 536
The Glory of Tournai 540
Who Is Minding the Bridges? (A Personal Inquiry) 548
10 Follow the Paper-Trails
The Common Place of Law. Transforming Matters of Concern into the Objects of Everyday Life 556
Public International Indigenes 566
The People of Karlsruhe. Jochen Gerz's Constitutional Rights Square 574
The Notebook: A Paper-Technology 582
Removing Knowledge 590
Blocking Things Public 600
The Image, between Res privata and Res communis 602
11 What's Political in Political Economy?
An Artificial Being 614
The Stock Ticker 622
Listening to the Spread Plot 628
This Announcement Appears as a Matter of Record Only! Notes on The New Germany Found Inc / Universalia Non Realia Sed Nomina 634
Releasing Market Statistics 638
Capitalism Cartograms and World Government 642
Publicizing Goldilocks' Choice at the Supermarket. The Political Work of Shopping Packs, Carts and Talk 646
The Creators of the Shopping Worlds 660
Cuddly / We Are the Children 661
The Parliament of Fashion 662
Questions of Taste 670
12 The Political Aesthetic of Reason
Hard Facts 680
Paint/Print/Public 686
The Evidence of Phryne, or Phryne Stripped Bare by Rhetoric Even 694
Humanization of Knowledge Through the Eye 698
Democratic Socialism, Cybernetic Socialism. Making the Chilean Economy Public 708
Science in the Age of Sensibility 722
Political Aesthetics. Image and Form in Contemporary Dutch Spatial Politics 726
Public Experiments. On Several Productions of Bertolt Brecht's "The Life of Galileo" 734
13 Parliamentary Technologies
Re: Public 746
The Circle of Discussion and the Semicircle of Criticism 754
Excerpt: Abbe Sieyes on the Infinite Parliament 770
Stranded Bodies of Democracy. Cases from the Indian Himalayas 772
How to Make a Still Picture Speak and Walk. The Fabulous Destiny of a Gandhi Follower 778
Parliamentary Public 786
Designing the Agon. Questions on Architecture, Space, Democracy and "the Political" 798
Some Reflections on an Agonistic Approach to the Public 804
Centers Don't Have to Be Points. Politics beyond State Boundaries 810
Voting Machinery, Counting and Public Proofs in the 2000 US Presidential Election 814
Dark Source. Public Trust and the Secret at the Heart of the New Voting Machines 828
Spin. A Documentary on Political Media 834
Turning Public Discourse into an Authentic Artifact: Shorthand Transcription in the French National Assembly 836
The Power of Representation: Parliaments of North Africa and the Middle East 844
Legible Mob 846
14 A Search for Eloquence
Excerpt: Jean de La Fontaine on the Power of Fables 856
Managing Evidence 858
Excerpt: Jonathan Swift on the Tricky Art of Conversation 866
Pindices 872
Communiculture 874
BEcomING COLLECTIVE. The Constitution of Audience as an Interactional Process 876
Excerpt: Bertolt Brecht on How Dictators Learn Their Rhetoric from Shakespeare 884
The Chorus in Opera. Concocting Common Sense 886
Getting Together in Cinema 894
Narrative Device IV 898
Borderdevice(s) 900
What Is a Body / a Person? Topography of the Possible 906
Fair Assembly 910
Blogs. The New Public Forum - Private Matters, Political Issues, Corporate Interests 916
Recipe for Tracing the Fate of Issues and Their Publics on the Web 922
The Chronofile-Society 936
15 New Political Passions?
Atmospheric Politics 944
Instant Democracy: The Pneumatic Parliament 952
I Am a Revolutionary, 2001 / Everything You've Heard Is Wrong 958
Lungs: Slave Labour 960
Allegories of the Political 962
MapHub: HEARD and MapMover 964
Agonistics: A Language Game 966
The Fate of Art in the Age of Terror 970
The Trials of the World - a Fiction 978
Still Life 982
The Tragedy of Minamata. Sit-in and Face-to-Face Discussion 988
The Cosmopolitical Proposal 994
Excerpt: Herman Melville on Bartleby and the Limit of All Politics 1004
Conclusion
Art and Democracy 1008
Inserts
Elisabeth Bronfen: The Birth of the Glamourous Star as an Optical Illusion. Busby Berkeley's Dames 1010
CYKLOOP: The World's First Mobile Virtual-Reality Center 1016
Sebastian Fischer, Lasse Scherffig, Hans H. Diebner: EyeVisionBot 1017
Yoann Le Claire: Fabien Lerat, Theatre 1022
Jenny Marketou: Flying Spy Potatoes: Mission 21st Street, NYC 1032
Appendix
Works in the Exhibition 1042
Biographies of the Authors 1051
Index 1058
