With the global rise of a politics of shock driven by authoritarian regimes that subvert the rule of law and civil liberties, what paths to resistance, sanctuary, and change can cultural institutions offer? In this book, more than twenty leading curators and thinkers about contemporary art present powerful case studies, historical analyses, and theoretical perspectives that address the dynamics of activism, protest, and advocacy.

Becoming Palm is the outcome of a conversation between two friends, artist Simryn Gill and anthropologist Michael Taussig, addressing the complexities of palm oil and “the enormous transformations, human, and ecological, that this crop engenders” (Taussig) in two disparate geographical locations, Southeast Asia and South America.

This publication focuses on the practice of curating in Southeast Asia, a region experiencing a time of increased global visibility as well as nation and institution building. The diversity of voices in this publication mirrors the complexity of the region itself: its various curatorial spaces, infrastructures, and political systems.

The work of art has often been a battleground—its decorative and formal aspects positioned against its nature as an embodiment of cognitive acts. Leonardo da Vinci’s claim that art be a “cosa mentale” is winning at last: recent debates around art schools and their methods, of which this book is a vast survey, demonstrate that, now more than ever, art is considered the result of a thinking process.

This new collaborative publication, Dare to Count Phonemes and Graphemes, has evolved within the framework of these geographically separate yet collaboratively conceived exhibitions held in the fall of 2013: “Journal of Bouba/kiki” at Glasgow Sculpture Studios (October 5–December 20); and “Journal of Echomimetic Motions” at Bergen Kunsthall (October 18–December 22).

Europe, as a political space, is as conflictual as its constitution. It needs to be designed and negotiated. It is longing for an architecture of strategic encounters. Based on the curation of a space at the 2007 Lyon Biennial, London-based architect and writer Markus Miessen has drawn together a group of people to lead conversations around alternative notions of participation, the clash of democratic heterogeneities, and what it means to live in Europe today.