The Art of the Project

The idea of the ‘project’ crosses generic, disciplinary and cultural frontiers. At a time when writers and artists are increasingly describing their practices as ‘projects’, remarkably little critical attention has been paid to the actual idea of the ‘project’. This collection of essays responds to an urgent need by suggesting a framework for evaluating the notion of the project in the light of various modernist and postmodernist cultural practices, drawn mainly but not exclusively from the French-speaking domain. The overview offered by this volume promises to makes an original and thought-provoking contribution to contemporary literary, artistic and cultural criticism.

List of Illustrations

Introduction: Tracking the Art of the Project: History, Theory, Practice
Johnnie Gratton and Michael Sheringham

Chapter 1. Man Ray’s Endgame and Other Modernist Gambits
Wendy Grossman

Chapter 2. Projected Journeys: Exploring the Limits of Travel
Charles Forsdick

Chapter 3. What does Reality Television Threaten?
Ingrid Wassenaar

Chapter 4. Programming and Play: Life Drive and Death Drive in the Work of Georges Perec, Roman Opalka and Jean-Benoît Puech
Dominique Rabaté

Chapter 5. Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse: Salvage and the Art of Forgetting
Emma Wilson

Chapter 6. Games with the Gaze: Sophie Calle’s Postmodern Phototextuality
Kate Ince

Chapter 7. On the Subject of the Project
Johnnie Gratton

Chapter 8. The Art of the Grand projet: Malraux’s Imaginary Museum and its Contemporary Legacy
Douglas Smith

Chapter 9. Experimenting with Identity: People, Place and Urban Change in Contemporary French Photography
Edward Welch

Chapter 10. Programmes and Projects in the Contemporary Literary Field
Dominique Viart

Chapter 11. The Project and the Everyday: François Bon’s Experiments in Attention
Michael Sheringham

Chapter 12. Michel Foucault: Life as a Work of Art
Patrick Ffrench

Notes on Contributors
Index