Resonant Matter

In Resonant Matter, Lutz Koepnick considers contemporary sound and installation art as a unique laboratory of hospitality amid inhospitable times. Inspired by Ragnar Kjartansson's nine-channel video installation The Visitors (2012), the book explores resonance the ability of objects to be affected by the vibrations of other objects as a model of art's fleeting promise to make us coexist with things strange and other. In a series of nuanced readings, Koepnick follows the echoes of distant, unexpected, and unheard sounds in twenty-first century art to reflect on the attachments we pursue to sustain our lives and the walls we need to tear down to secure possible futures.

The book's nine chapters approach The Visitors from ever-different conceptual angles while bringing it into dialogue with the work of other artists and musicians such as Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Guillermo Galindo, Mischa Kuball, Philipp Lachenmann, Alvien Lucier, Teresa Margolles, Carsten Nicolai, Camille Norment, Susan Philipsz, David Rothenberg, Juliana Snapper, and Tanya Tagaq.

With this book, Koepnick situates resonance as a vital concept of contemporary art criticism and sound studies. His analysis encourages us not only to expand our understanding of the role of sound in art, of sound art, but to attune our critical encounter with art to art's own resonant thinking.

About the Author

Lutz Koepnick is the Max Kade Foundation Chair in German Studies and Professor of Cinema and Media Arts at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, USA). Koepnick has published widely on media and sound art, film, and aesthetic theory from the 19th to the 21st century. He is the author of, most recently, Fitzcarraldo (2018), The Long Take: Art Cinema and the Wondrous (2017), Michael Bay: World Cinema in the Age of Populism (2017), and On Slowness: Toward an Aesthetic of the Contemporary (2014).