Raving & Reader Set – 2 Books

McKenzie Wark’s Raving and a volume of art theory texts published for the Biennale Matter of Art 2024, together for a discounted price.

In her book Raving, McKenzie Wark shows the intimate and collective sides of life in the New York trans and queer rave scene. For Wark, rave is not just a dance or club thing: It is much more about self-expression, performative ritual, a literally shared bodily process leading toward catharsis. But it is also a manifesto, a shared practice, and a common resistance against the pressures of consumerism and patriarchal structures. A strongly autofictional approach allows Wark to reveal in detail her purely intimate need to merge with sound, rhythm, and her own body. With great openness, she describes her rave-defined attitude toward sex, drugs, and the search for her own boundaries in the seemingly endless sub-space of the big city. As a result, Raving is an extremely raw, authentic, and plastic portrait that flows with energy, power, and defiance.

Sowing Unrest – the Biennale Reader was published on the occasion of the third Biennale Matter of Art. With newly commissioned as well as republished essays, conversations, poems, and artistic contributions, it grafts the two curatorial threads of the biennale—Aleksei Borisionok’s interest in workers’ movements and Katalin Erdődi’s focus on rural change—in order to talk about the past, present, and future of political movements across the rural–urban divide. How do people in rural areas organize to effect change in society? How can people strike and achieve their political demands? How can care be organized as a basis for solidarity and mutual aid? We are curious about the various ways in which unrest—a state of dissatisfaction, disturbance, and agitation—can grow in unexpected places.