The Age of Earthquakes

Last updated

The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present
The Age of Earthquakes.jpg
First edition (US)
Authors
IllustratorWayne Daly
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Penguin Books (UK)
Blue Rider Press (US)
Publication date
March 5, 2015 (UK)
March 3, 2015 (US)
Media typePrint (paperback) and digital (ebook)
Pages256 pp
ISBN 978-0-141-97956-4

The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present is a book written by British writer and curator Shumon Basar, Canadian writer and artist Douglas Coupland, and Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. It was published in 2015 by Penguin Books in the UK, Blue Rider Press in the U.S. and Eichborn in Germany.

Contents

Summary

Modelled around the influential 1967 paperback The Medium is the Massage, by Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel — which was first published by Penguin Books in the UK — The Age of Earthquakes updates McLuhan's prophetic 20th century pronouncements to the Internet addled, 21st century. "The unpredictable side effects of technology are what dictate the future – there is always an excess to what we invent," say Basar/Coupland/Obrist, "we would argue that it's those excess effects... that produce the most radical – and also sometimes most unsettling – moral, philosophical, social and cultural transformations." [1] The book's abiding premise, therefore, is that, "We haven't just changed our brains these past few years. We've changed the structure of the planet". [2]

Design

The Age of Earthquakes is directly inspired by Quentin Fiore's experimental style he made famous in The Medium is the Massage. For The Age of Earthquakes, graphic designer Wayne Daly took familiar visual cues from contemporary apps and other screen based matter, and translated them onto the printed page, in stark black and white. The text — written and collated by Basar/Coupland/Obrist — appears as aphoristic phrases and quotes. Some pages are left blank, while others require the reader to rotate the book 90 degrees, reminiscent of the portrait/horizontal modes on mobile phones. The reading experience emulates what Fiore achieved with The Medium is the Massage: to create "a dialogue between the computer and the book." [3]

Visual contributors

Most of the images in the book were generated from a process entitled "mindsourcing." [4] The manuscript was sent to 35 artists, from all over the world, some born after 1989, several born before 1945, who were asked to respond with relevant visual work.

They are Farah Al Qasimi, Ed Atkins, Gabriele Basilico, Alessandro Bava, Josh Bitelli, James Bridle, Cao Fei, Alex Mackin Dolan, Thomas Dozol, Constant Dullaart, Cécile B. Evans, Rami Farook, Hans-Peter Feldmann, GCC, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Eloise Hawser, Camille Henrot, Hu Fang, K-Hole, Koo Jeong-A, Katja Novitskova, Lara Ogel, Trevor Paglen, Yuri Pattison, Jon Rafman, Bunny Rogers, Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Taryn Simon, Hito Steyerl, Michael Stipe, Rosemarie Trockel, Amalia Ulman, David Weir and Trevor Yeung.

Reception

Pacific Standard magazine described it as "a kind of philosophical Anarchist Cookbook for the online era"; [5] Jon Snow on Channel 4 News called it "absolutely amazing"; [6] Vice.com characterised it as "a new philosophy-cum-modern-self-help book"; [1] and Dazed said it was a "guidebook, map for today and mediation on the madness of our media, it's an awesome, dizzying read." [7] However, The Los Angeles Times accused it of being, "a project that looks backward, rather than ahead," [8] ; and Kirkus Reviews said, "its hipper-than-thou self-satisfaction runs close to the surface of a superficial book." [9] Jarvis Cocker dedicated one of his last BBC Radio 6 Music Sunday Service [10] programs to The Age of Earthquakes. Cocker interviewed Basar and Coupland, in a montage of music and words that echoed the experience of the book.

Notes

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marshall McLuhan</span> Canadian philosopher and communications scholar (1911–1980)

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his teaching career as a professor of English at several universities in the United States and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life.

<i>The Medium Is the Massage</i> 1967 book by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore

The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects is a book co-created by media analyst Marshall McLuhan and graphic designer Quentin Fiore, with coordination by Jerome Agel. It was published by Bantam Books in 1967 and became a bestseller with a cult following. The U.K. edition was published by Allen Lane Penguin Books using cover art by Newsweek photographer Tony Rollo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Ulrich Obrist</span> Swiss art curator, critic and historian (born 24/5/1968)

Hans Ulrich Obrist is a Swiss art curator, critic, and historian of art. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of The Interview Project, an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is also co-editor of the Cahiers d'Art review. He lives and works in London.

Bidoun is an American non-profit organization, focused on art and culture from the Middle East and its diasporas. Bidoun was founded as a print publication and magazine in 2004 by Lisa Farjam, eventually expanding to curatorial projects. The Bidoun magazine was in publication from spring 2004 until spring 2013.

Madelon Vriesendorp is a Dutch artist, painter, sculptor and art collector. She was married to Rem Koolhaas and best known as one of the co-founders of the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in the early 1970s. Vriesendorp would often create visuals and graphics for OMA in the early years.

This is a bibliography of Marshall McLuhan's works.

Ou Ning is a Chinese artist, film maker, curator, writer, publisher and activist. He is the director of two films San Yuan Li (2003) and Meishi Street (2005), chief curator of Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture (2009), founding chief editor of the literary bimonthly Chutzpah!, founder of Bishan Commune (2011-2016) and School of Tillers (2015-2016). He taught at GSAPP, Columbia University and worked as the founding curator of Kwan-Yen Project from 2016 to 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Coupland</span> Canadian writer and graphic designer (born 1961)

Douglas Coupland is a Canadian novelist, designer, and visual artist. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularized the terms Generation X and McJob. He has published 13 novels, two collections of short stories, seven non-fiction books, and a number of dramatic works and screenplays for film and television. He is a columnist for the Financial Times, as well as a frequent contributor to The New York Times, e-flux journal, DIS Magazine, and Vice. His art exhibits include Everywhere Is Anywhere Is Anything Is Everything, which was exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, now the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada, and Bit Rot at Rotterdam's Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, as well as the Villa Stuck.

Quentin Fiore was a graphic designer, who worked mostly in books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Hiorns</span> British Contemporary artist (born 1975)

Roger Hiorns is a British artist based in London. His primary media is sculpture and installation, using a wide variety of materials, including metals, wood and plastics. He also works in the media of video and photography.

Laboratorium was a contemporary art exhibition curated by Barbara Vanderlinden and Hans-Ulrich Obrist at Fotomuseum Antwerp, the Century City building and various other locations in Antwerp, Belgium, from 27 June to 3 October 1999.

Shumon Basar is a British writer, editor and curator.

Daina Augaitis is a Canadian curator whose work focuses on contemporary art. From 1996 to 2017, she was the chief curator and associate director of the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art Dubai</span>

Art Dubai is a leading international art fair that takes place every March in Dubai. Founded in 2007, Art Dubai is the pre-eminent platform for art from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Each year, the fair features a globally diverse lineup of over 90 galleries from more than 40 different countries, from household names to emerging art spaces, making it the world's most globally diverse art fair.

This is a bibliography for Hans-Ulrich Obrist, a Swiss art curator, critic and historian of art. He currently lives in London.

Markus Miessen is a German architect and writer.

Joseph Grigely is an American visual artist and scholar. His work is primarily conceptual and engages a variety of media forms including sculpture, video, and installations. Grigely was included in two Whitney Biennials, and is also a Guggenheim Fellow. He lives and works in Chicago, where he is Professor of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Simon Castets is a French-American curator serving as the Director of Strategic Initiatives of LUMA Arles, France since 2022. From 2013 to 2021, he was Director of Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York, then its Executive Chair through 2022, and continues to serve on its Board as a Trustee.

<i>The Nineties</i> (book) 2022 book by Chuck Klosterman

The Nineties: A Book is a 2022 book by Chuck Klosterman. It is an analysis of historical trends and pop culture phenomena in the decade of the 1990s. It was released February 8, 2022, by Penguin Books. It debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list on February 27, 2022.

<i>The Medium Is the Massage</i> (album) Album by Marshall McLuhan

The Medium Is the Massage is an album by Canadian media philosopher Marshall McLuhan, released in July 1967 by Columbia Records. It is the audio companion to the book of the same name, co-authored by McLuhan with Quentin Fiore, which explores the subconscious effects of mass media on the global psyche. The record was produced by John Simon of Columbia, who took creative control of the recording, and co-ordinated by Jerome Agel.