Infrastructural Critique:Contemporary Art Between Reproduction and Abolition

A theory of art and infrastructure by one of the most brilliant critical theorists of her generation

As we search for ways to imagine a life beyond capital and its drive to extinction, the dream of the institution as a critical refuge from existing social relations becomes less and less credible.

Infrastructural Critique proposes a new materialist counter-praxis. By treating the contemporary art institution as a resource base and site of struggle, Vishmidt reanimates critique by connecting it to the effort to erode capitalist authority over the means of our existence, build power and seize resources for new practices of social invention.

A tour-de-force of Marxist philosophy, art criticism, Milanese radical feminism and AppleTV+ dinosaur documentaries, this book, edited in the wake of the author’s tragic early death, weaves in the gaps of theory and praxis to assess the main infrastructurally critical artmakers at work today. Approaching their practices as ‘crystal drills’ – at once means of seeing, and practical cutting implements – the text showcases the light-bending, life-shaping thinking of one of the most playful, politically radical theorists of her generation.