Jim Brown reviewed Disobedient Aesthetics by Anthony Stagliano
"experimental, creative, artistic research into control’s techniques and mechanisms"
This book analyzes a series of artistic interventions into surveillance technologies and, more broadly, technologies of control in order to theorize a "disobedient aesthetics" that looks for ways to move beyond the critique of such systems. From fabric that thwarts the thermal sensors of drones to various attempts to confound facial recognition systems (and ore), the book demonstrates how such efforts attempt to build a "redesigned being together."
The book is useful to those interested in how art can critique systems not by advocating for their removal but by reconfiguring relationships among people and technologies. It offers theoretical elaborations of and responses to Deleuze, Derrida, Shannon Mattern, and many others. It will be of particular interest to those studying rhetoric and digital media, but it also extends beyond those disciplinary boundaries.