Fotograf Magazine

In recent years, a collaboration between the collectives APART, Display and Kapitál have generated many interesting pocket-sized books. In thematic compendia which bring together texts by Slovak and Czech writers with contributors from abroad, they overstep even the already-expanded field of art. They comment upon pressing topics, whether that mean positions on health, old age, or, in the case of this last publication, climate change. Of the five texts (by Critical Art Ensemble, Karmína, Wendy Lynne Lee, Donna M. Orange and T. J. Demos), only the one by the last author listed really relates to art—“The Agency of Fire: Burning Aesthetics”. With a serious irony, Demos proposes a description of the present as the pyrocene, warns us against distancing ourselves by watching fire through images in the media and on social science, which do not truly capture the problem, but rather serve as indexes of the plundering of the landscape for its mineral wealth. This collection will certainly convince already-convinced readers to deepen the arguments for their ecological grief and struggle. However, it does not aim to address those who are not yet engaged.