{"title":"Brian Massumi","description":"Brian Massumi is Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences at the University of Montréal. He is the author of Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation and A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (MIT Press).","products":[{"product_id":"semblance-and-event-activist-philosophy-and-the-occurrent-arts-paperback","title":"Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn investigation of the \"occurrent arts\" through the concepts of the \"semblance\" and \"lived abstraction.\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEvents are always passing; to experience an event is to experience the passing. But how do we perceive an experience that encompasses the just-was and the is-about-to-be as much as what is actually present? In \u003ci\u003eSemblance and Event\u003c\/i\u003e, Brian Massumi, drawing on the work of William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, and others, develops the concept of \"semblance\" as a way to approach this question. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is, he argues, a question of abstraction, not as the opposite of the concrete but as a dimension of it: \"lived abstraction.\" A semblance is a lived abstraction. Massumi uses the category of the semblance to investigate practices of art that are relational and event-oriented--variously known as interactive art, ephemeral art, performance art, art intervention--which he refers to collectively as the \"occurrent arts.\" Each art practice invents its own kinds of relational events of lived abstraction, to produce a signature species of semblance. The artwork's relational engagement, Massumi continues, gives it a political valence just as necessary and immediate as the aesthetic dimension. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50119759364319,"sku":"9780262525367","price":54.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/yYX0v7eGTp9780262525367.webp?v=1781571413"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/brian-massumi.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}