Spectacular Optical

SPECTACULAR OPTICAL is a book published by TRANS> arts.cultures.media to accompany the exhibition bt the same name held at Thread Waxing Space. The book takes as a point of departure the cultural fascination with violence, atrocity, mutation and the ways that they are depicted (some would say gentrified) as entertainment. The essays examine the ways in which opticality has become so spectacular, how this bedazzlement with entertainment is engineered in the larger sphere of cultural production. From feminism to fetishism, from simulation to stimulation, the book takes as an example David Cronenberg's work which deals with corporeality, aggravated biology, technology, spectacle, media, and violence.