Amanda Boetzkes
Biographic Data
| ID | 1665692 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Amanda Boetzkes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Amanda |
| FAMILY NAME | Boetzkes |
| SIGNATURE | BOETZKES A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Guelph |
| ORCID | 0009-0009-2367-3658 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Capitalist prizefighters striking the plasticity of art
This article considers the dialectics of plasticity at the intersection of art, boxing, and political ecology. It focuses on the visuality of Black male boxers in Jean-Michel Basquiat oeuvre. I explore how Basquiat viewed the struggle of artistic expression (art’s plasticity) as akin to prizefighting. I draw from the critical aesthetic maneuvers of the French theorist Georges Bataille, and the realist painter Gustave Courbet in order to show how …
Geofetishism and the Tender Violence of Rare Earths
This article addresses the geospeculation of Kuannersuit, a mountain in southwest Greenland that holds a major deposit of rare earth minerals, including uranium. Through the concepts of "geofetishism" and "tender violence," we consider the history of mineral speculation in Greenland, and how its colonial history bears on the now independent (Inuit) Greenlandic government, and the township of Narsaq. With a focus on the anti-uranium activist group…
Cold Sun • Hot Planet
This article considers how Georges Bataille's account of solarity informs a planetary perspective. Bataille is credited with formulating a critical analysis of "solar societies" whose economies are shaped by the exchange of solar energy. However, a sometimes understated facet of Bataille's reading of solarity is the way he positions living beings at the axis of the sun and the earth, and in the midst of elemental forces such as cold, heat, light,…
Waste and the Sublime Landscape
Les impératifs écologiques ont joué un rôle de plus en plus important dans la production de l’art contemporain. Mais, si l’on fait souvent remonter l’« éco-art » au mouvement du land art des années 1960, de nombreux artistes contemporains se sont tournés vers les traditions paysagères du dix-huitième et du dix-neuvième siècle qui représentent pour eux une source d’inspiration esthétique et de réflexion éthique. Cet article se penche sur le renouv…
The Arts, Environmental Justice, and the Ecological Crisis
Plastic Capitalism: Contemporary Art and the Drive to Waste
An argument for the centrality of the visual culture of waste—as seen in works by international contemporary artists—to the study of our ecological condition. Ecological crisis has driven contemporary artists to engage with waste in its most non-biodegradable forms: plastics, e-waste, toxic waste, garbage hermetically sealed in landfills. In this provocative and original book, Amanda Boetzkes links the increasing visualization of waste in contemp…
Resource Systems, the Paradigm of Zero-Waste, and the Desire for Sustenance
This essay argues that efforts to recuperate the ecological damage of industrial waste as a profitable resource obscure the broader procedures by which human bodies, substances, energies, and desires are also yielded as resources in an economic model of indefinite expansion. The “cradle-to-cradle” proposition for a zero-waste society thus corresponds with the expanding scope and complex operations by which lives are deprived of plenitude and star…
Phenomenology and Interpretation Beyond the Flesh
This article explores the ethical questions surrounding the phenomenological approach to interpretation in art history. It addresses contemporary art, from postminimalist sculpture to installation. Although the risk of phenomenology is that it merely confirms and reproduces the viewer's perceptual expectations, in fact, on a deeper level, the notion of the ontological intertwining of the viewer and the artwork demands a receptive stance in the fa…
Cold Sun • Hot Planet
This article considers how Georges Bataille's account of solarity informs a planetary perspective. Bataille is credited with formulating a critical analysis of "solar societies" whose economies are shaped by the exchange of solar energy. However, a sometimes understated facet of Bataille's reading of solarity is the way he positions living beings at the axis of the sun and the earth, and in the midst of elemental forces such as cold, heat, light,…
Phenomenology and Interpretation Beyond the Flesh
This article explores the ethical questions surrounding the phenomenological approach to interpretation in art history. It addresses contemporary art, from postminimalist sculpture to installation. Although the risk of phenomenology is that it merely confirms and reproduces the viewer's perceptual expectations, in fact, on a deeper level, the notion of the ontological intertwining of the viewer and the artwork demands a receptive stance in the fa…
Geofetishism and the Tender Violence of Rare Earths
This article addresses the geospeculation of Kuannersuit, a mountain in southwest Greenland that holds a major deposit of rare earth minerals, including uranium. Through the concepts of "geofetishism" and "tender violence," we consider the history of mineral speculation in Greenland, and how its colonial history bears on the now independent (Inuit) Greenlandic government, and the township of Narsaq. With a focus on the anti-uranium activist group…
Phenomenology and Interpretation Beyond the Flesh
This article explores the ethical questions surrounding the phenomenological approach to interpretation in art history. It addresses contemporary art, from postminimalist sculpture to installation. Although the risk of phenomenology is that it merely confirms and reproduces the viewer's perceptual expectations, in fact, on a deeper level, the notion of the ontological intertwining of the viewer and the artwork demands a receptive stance in the fa…
Resource Systems, the Paradigm of Zero-Waste, and the Desire for Sustenance
This essay argues that efforts to recuperate the ecological damage of industrial waste as a profitable resource obscure the broader procedures by which human bodies, substances, energies, and desires are also yielded as resources in an economic model of indefinite expansion. The “cradle-to-cradle” proposition for a zero-waste society thus corresponds with the expanding scope and complex operations by which lives are deprived of plenitude and star…
Plastic Capitalism: Contemporary Art and the Drive to Waste
An argument for the centrality of the visual culture of waste—as seen in works by international contemporary artists—to the study of our ecological condition. Ecological crisis has driven contemporary artists to engage with waste in its most non-biodegradable forms: plastics, e-waste, toxic waste, garbage hermetically sealed in landfills. In this provocative and original book, Amanda Boetzkes links the increasing visualization of waste in contemp…
Waste and the Sublime Landscape
Les impératifs écologiques ont joué un rôle de plus en plus important dans la production de l’art contemporain. Mais, si l’on fait souvent remonter l’« éco-art » au mouvement du land art des années 1960, de nombreux artistes contemporains se sont tournés vers les traditions paysagères du dix-huitième et du dix-neuvième siècle qui représentent pour eux une source d’inspiration esthétique et de réflexion éthique. Cet article se penche sur le renouv…
The Arts, Environmental Justice, and the Ecological Crisis
Cold Sun • Hot Planet
This article considers how Georges Bataille's account of solarity informs a planetary perspective. Bataille is credited with formulating a critical analysis of "solar societies" whose economies are shaped by the exchange of solar energy. However, a sometimes understated facet of Bataille's reading of solarity is the way he positions living beings at the axis of the sun and the earth, and in the midst of elemental forces such as cold, heat, light,…
Geofetishism and the Tender Violence of Rare Earths
This article addresses the geospeculation of Kuannersuit, a mountain in southwest Greenland that holds a major deposit of rare earth minerals, including uranium. Through the concepts of "geofetishism" and "tender violence," we consider the history of mineral speculation in Greenland, and how its colonial history bears on the now independent (Inuit) Greenlandic government, and the township of Narsaq. With a focus on the anti-uranium activist group…
Capitalist prizefighters striking the plasticity of art
This article considers the dialectics of plasticity at the intersection of art, boxing, and political ecology. It focuses on the visuality of Black male boxers in Jean-Michel Basquiat oeuvre. I explore how Basquiat viewed the struggle of artistic expression (art’s plasticity) as akin to prizefighting. I draw from the critical aesthetic maneuvers of the French theorist Georges Bataille, and the realist painter Gustave Courbet in order to show how …
Political science (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · Art (3 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Business (2 works) · Computer Science (2 works) · Ecology (2 works) · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics (2 works)