Virilio and Visual Culture

From Visual Arts to the 'War of Images,' a breakthrough in Virilio Studies. Sylvère Lotringer, Professor Emeritus, Columbia University, Founder Semiotext(e) For nearly forty years, Paul Virilio has confronted apocalypse. From the Blitzkrieg of his childhood to catastrophes of 21st century technology, he has contemplated and produced images of apocalypse, and the apocalypse of images. Armitage and Bishop have packed their book with analyses and interpretations of Virilio's radical and revelatory poetics of a simultaneously intensifying and unravelling visuality, creating their own oblique architecture to disturb and renew the oeuvre of one of the least predictable thinkers of the fin-de-millennium. Sean Cubitt, Goldsmiths, University of London A critical appraisal of Virilio's contribution to contemporary art, photography, film, television and more Paul Virilio is one of the leading and most challenging critics of art and technology working today. Reconceptualising everything from technology and photography to cultural studies and media studies through his own original theories and arguments, Virilio's work compels readers to ask if his criticism is out of touch or out in front of traditional perspectives. This anthology of 13 original writings, including a newly translated piece by Virilio himself, moves between the visual and the urban, the military and the ethical, the architectural and the aesthetic, the historical and the postmodern. It is indispensable reading for all students and researchers of contemporary visual culture. John Armitage is Professor of Media Arts at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. Ryan Bishop is Professor of Global Arts and Politics also at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton.