Infrastructural Brutalism. Art and the necropolis of infrastructure

Authors

Michael Truscello

Year

2020

Title

Infrastructural Brutalism. Art and the necropolis of infrastructure

Material type

Books

 

In Infrastructural Brutalism, Michael Truscello explores the necropolitics of infrastructures-how they determine who can live and who must die-through the lens of artistic media. He examines white settler nostalgia for the fiction of ‘drowned towns’ written after the Tennessee Valley Authority flooded rural areas for hydroelectric projects; argues that the road movie represents a struggle against liberal governmentality; considers the ruins of oil capitalism as seen in photographic landscapes of post-industrial waste; and offers an account of ‘death train narratives’ ranging from Holocaust history to post-apocalyptic fiction. Finally, he calls for a ‘brisantic politics’, a culture of undoing capable of stemming the tide of capitalist suicide. “Brisance’ refers to the shattering effect of an explosive, but Truscello uses the term to point to a variety of practices for defeating infrastructural power. Brisantic politics, he warns, would require a reorientation of radical politics towards infrastructure, sabotage and cascading destruction in an interconnected world.