NATO THOMPSON is chief curator at Creative Time, one of New York's most prestigious and exciting art organizations. He is the editor of The Interventionists- A Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life; Experimental Geography- Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism (Melville House), and Ahistoric Occasion- Artists Making History. And he is the author of Seeing Power (Melville House).
“Explores the ways in which the tools of culture are deployed to do
everything from sell iPhones to wage war...The book’s landing
during the early days of the Trump administration couldn’t have
been more impeccable...Culture as Weapon provides a compelling
manual for determining how the manipulation begins.”—LOS ANGELES
TIMES
“Art has played a huge role in shaping modern society...But
In Culture as Weapon, Nato Thompson argues that art—or more
specifically, the criticism of art—can also be an invaluable way to
score political points.”—TIME
“Energetic, briskly paced, and well-researched…[Thompson] voids
cliché and succeeds in raising awareness of the cultural forces
that shape brand preferences and political allegiance.”—PUBLISHERS
WEEKLY
“[Thompson explores] how persuasive cultural mechanisms are encoded
in broader social structures, from high art to war-planning...A
precisely written critique of cultural manipulation in our daily
lives.”—KIRKUS REVIEWS
“[Thompson] explores the intersections of art, culture, and
manipulation in society...Informative, profound, and
alarming.”—BOOKLIST/American Library Association
“When it comes to living in a democracy, Nato Thompson argues,
nothing affects us more directly and more powerfully than
culture.”—THE ATLANTIC
“Thompson outlines the ways that all forms of culture can be
deployed to appeal to our emotional selves.”—ARTNET NEWS
“A crucial read about the way PR methods have sunk into every
aspect of our lives...This book makes the culture wars seem even
deeper, more far-reaching and more crucial than ever
before.”—FLAVORWIRE
“With illuminating perspicacity, Thompson explores the myriad ways
unmarketable art survives in a society where political divisions,
the aesthetics of advertising, and the mistaking of finely-tuned
commercial branding for communal bonding drive modern American
culture.”—THE CULTURE TRIP
“Timely and significant.”—COACHELLA VALLEY WEEKLY
“Culture as Weapon is a brilliant and scathing take no
prisoners critique of contemporary culture. Spanning military
occupation, capitalism masquerading as charity, and personal
computing, Nato Thompson shows us the dark side of how culture is
deployed to fortify power.”—Laura Poitras,
filmmaker, Citizenfour
“Yes, art 'works,' as the saying goes, but what work does it do?
Does it make us wiser? Does it help us to understand ourselves? Not
necessarily. As Nato Thompson shows us in this wide-ranging and
provocatively written book, art sometimes takes us down a different
road entirely. Art sells; art gentrifies; art puts a nice glossy
shine on the neoliberal project. Read it and discover exactly how
mistaken is our assumption that human creativity brings us always
closer to some earthly utopia.”—Thomas Frank, author of What's The
Matter With Kansas?
“One of the most compelling curators and thinkers in the arts
today turns his discerning eye to the new politics of the
culture war. Roaming widely from Hollywood to Washington D.C.,
Madison Avenue to Mosul, while unpacking 'creative city'
boosterism, the new 'corporate sociability,' and the 21st century
charity complex, his provocative argument is that the powerful have
learned from artists the tools and tactics of the
counterculture—and we are not the better for it. A powerful,
bracing, important read.” —Jeff Chang, author Can't Stop Won't
Stop
“Culture as Weapon reveals the profound social
function that art plays. Thompson explores how art is situated at
this nexus of utopic vision and social reality, and suggests how we
can navigate a landscape where art, culture, and its producers
and consumers, seem to be emerging. This is the book that we
have been waiting for.”—Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of
the Serpentine Galleries, London
“Thompson efficiently demonstrates how culture can be turned into a
set of tools and tactics that allows those in power to quietly
manipulate the impressionable, irrational and social creature that
we are...[Culture as Weapon] is informative and entertaining.
It is also troubling, thought-provoking and impossible to read
without thinking about Trump.”—We Make Money Not Art
“Brilliant...Thompson's main point is not that we should reject
culture as a method of positive change or resistance, but that we
need to be mindful of its limitations and prepared for systems of
power to respond in kind.”—Josh Cook, author of An Exaggerated
Murder
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