With this poetic and scholarly collection of stories about art, artists, and their materials, Nathaniel Stern argues that ecology, aesthetics, and ethics are inherently entwined, and together act as the cornerstone for all contemporary arts practices. An ecological approach, says Stern, takes account of agents, processes, thoughts, and relations. Humans, matter, concepts, things, not-yet-things, politics, economics, and industry are all actively shaped in, and as, their interrelation. And aesthetics are a style of, and orientation toward, thought?and thus action. Including dozens of color images, this book narrativizes artists and artworks?ranging from print to installation, bio art to community activism?contextualizing and amplifying our experiences and practices of complex systems and forces, our experiences and practices of thought. Stern, an artist himself, writes with an eco-aesthetic that continually unfurls artful tactics that can also be used in everyday existence.

Author Biography

NATHANIEL STERN is the author of Interactive Art and Embodiment: The Implicit Body as Performance. He is an associate professor of art and design at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an associate researcher at the University of Johannesburg.