Reviewed by:

• Science, Technology, and Utopias: Women Artists and Cold War America by Christine Filippone
• Charlie Gere (bio)

Science, Technology, and Utopias: Women Artists and Cold War America By Christine Filippone. London: Routledge, 2016. Pp. 218.

Christine Filippone's book looks at the work of several women artists during the Cold War, including that of some who are comparatively well known, such as Carolee Schneeman and Martha Rosler, and others less so, such as Alice Aycock and Agnes Denes. It is the latter two who offer the greatest revelations. Aycock's The Machine that Makes the World from 1979, or Denes' Syzygy—"The Moment of … a," from 1972–73 are both powerful articulations of and engagements with the complex systems that make up the world and our own selves. Read within the context of COVID-19 and lock-down, this book takes on a new kind of urgency. It is surprising how many keys to our current political, social, and ecological predicaments this book offers. On the surface, it is an academic history of a certain moment now several decades past, and an account of how American women artists engaged in critiquing the politics and culture of the Cold War, largely through performance and installation work. Yet it offers an urgent polemic and manifesto about the purpose of art—and how it might engage properly with the various catastrophes society now faces.

Christine Fillipone's book features artists who make complex, politically engaged, scientifically informed work. As stated above, of the artists Fillipone discusses, Carolee Schneeman and Martha Rosler are probably the best known, likely because they fit easily into popular narratives such as that of feminist art. While true, this is reductive in terms of their range of aims and ambitions. The others, Alice Aycock and Agnes Denes, are less easily pigeonholed, making the chapters on their work the real attraction of the book. This is in no way to denigrate that of Schneeman and Rosler, but rather to celebrate the book's capacity to broaden our understanding of postwar art by women in America. Aycock's and Denes's work is extraordinary, and with the further insight Fillipone presents, extraordinarily compelling evidence of their importance. They both worked across a variety of media and practices, including performance, drawing, and installation, to produce work that was both intellectually rich and highly poetic.

One of the great strengths of this excellent book is how it traces the artists' close engagement with science and technology. In general, the idea of artists being scientifically literate and using scientific ideas in their work seems largely forgotten. Most valuable of all, Fillipone traces the wide range of fascinating thinkers these artists read and who influenced their work. These include unjustly forgotten open systems theorists such as Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Gregory Bateson, Theodor Schwenk, and the Odum brothers, as well as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, whose work [End Page 590] is currently being revisited by thinkers such as Isabelle Stengers, Steven Shaviro, and Bruno Latour.

These artists were working in the context of the Cold War, using the master's weapons to dismantle the master's house, and the systems thinkers offered the means to understand the complex systems that governed the Cold War world. Many of the artists discussed were closely involved in the Peace Movement, and the urgency of the situation confronting them made their work very compelling. Filippone also shows how, even amid the Cold War with the imminent possibility of total destruction, they aimed to build, or at least to imagine, the idea of a feminist techno-utopia. Such a utopia would reject the "perfect world" model with its closed systems and be based instead on fluid boundaries and open systems.

The work of these artists comes from their own times and contexts, but also holds lessons for today, especially in light of the environmental catastrophe society is now witnessing. It is not just their engagement with technology and systems that offers models for current artistic practice, but also their utopianism. Utopias may be necessarily unrealizable in practice, but they can also...

审核人：

• 科学、技术和乌托邦：女性艺术家和美国冷战作者 Christine Filippone
• 查理·基尔（生物）

科学、技术和乌托邦：女艺术家和美国冷战，克里斯汀·菲利彭。伦敦：劳特利奇，2016 年。Pp。218.

Christine Filippone 的书着眼于冷战期间几位女性艺术家的作品，包括一些比较知名的人，如 Carolee Schneeman 和 Martha Rosler，还有一些不太知名的，如 Alice Aycock 和 Agnes Denes。后两者提供了最大的启示。Aycock所说的机器，使世界从1979年，或Denes' Syzygy-“的......一的瞬间，”从 1972 年到 73 年，这些都是对构成世界和我们自己的复杂系统的有力阐述和参与。在 COVID-19 和封锁的背景下阅读，这本书具有一种新的紧迫感。令人惊讶的是，这本书为我们当前的政治、社会和生态困境提供了多少关键。从表面上看，这是几十年前某个时刻的学术史，以及美国女性艺术家如何参与批判冷战时期的政治和文化，主要是通过表演和装置作品。然而，它提供了一个关于艺术目的的紧迫论战和宣言——以及它如何正确地应对社会现在面临的各种灾难。

Christine Fillipone 的书以艺术家为特色，他们制作复杂的、政治参与的、科学知识丰富的作品。如上所述，在 Fillipone 讨论的艺术家中，Carolee Schneeman 和 Martha Rosler 可能是最著名的，可能是因为他们很容易融入流行的叙事，例如女权主义艺术的叙事。虽然这是真的，但就他们的目标和抱负范围而言，这是缩减的。其他人，Alice Aycock 和 Agnes Denes，不太容易归类，这使得关于他们工作的章节成为这本书的真正吸引力。这绝不是在贬低施尼曼和罗斯勒的作品，而是为了庆祝这本书拓宽了我们对美国女性战后艺术理解的能力。Aycock 和 Denes 的工作非同寻常，随着 Fillipone 的深入洞察，非常有说服力的证据表明它们的重要性。他们都在各种媒体和实践中工作，包括表演、绘画和装置，以创作出既富有智慧又富有诗意的作品。

这本优秀书的一大优势在于它如何追溯艺术家与科学和技术的密切接触。总的来说，艺术家具有科学素养并在他们的作品中使用科学思想的想法似乎在很大程度上被遗忘了。最有价值的是，Fillipone 追溯了这些艺术家阅读并影响了他们工作的范围广泛的迷人思想家。其中包括被不公正地遗忘的开放系统理论家，例如 Ludwig von Bertalanffy、Gregory Bateson、Theodor Schwenk 和 Odum 兄弟，以及哲学家 Alfred North Whitehead，他们的著作[End Page 590]目前正在被 Isabelle Stengers 等思想家重新审视、史蒂文·沙维罗和布鲁诺·拉图尔。

这些艺术家在冷战的背景下工作，使用大师的武器拆除大师的房子，系统思想家提供了理解支配冷战世界的复杂系统的方法。所讨论的许多艺术家都与和平运动密切相关，他们所面临的形势的紧迫性使他们的作品非常引人注目。Filippone 还展示了，即使在冷战中，彻底毁灭的可能性迫在眉睫，他们仍打算建立，或者至少是想象，女权主义技术乌托邦的想法。这样的乌托邦将拒绝具有封闭系统的“完美世界”模型，而是基于流体边界和开放系统。

这些艺术家的作品来自他们自己的时代和语境，但也为今天提供了教训，特别是考虑到社会正在目睹的环境灾难。不仅是他们对技术和系统的参与为当前的艺术实践提供了模型，还有他们的乌托邦主义。乌托邦在实践中可能必然无法实现，但它们也可以……