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.

In A for Alibi, the Uqbar Foundation has invited a group of artists to perform research and develop projects using the impressive collection of optical instruments housed in the Utrecht University Museum. Exploring the boundaries of scientific practice and art, the book documents the various stages of this project and reflects on the origins of modern visual culture.

This book is about the many approaches to the creation, dissemination and maintenance of alternative, “bottom-up” models for social or economic organisation, and the practical and theoretical implications, consequences and possibilities of these self-organised structures.