Mix & Stir, this book’s aim is an endeavour to understand art as being a panhuman phenomenon of all times and cultures; to steer away from the persistent Eurocentric/Western-centric viewpoint towards a transcultural and transnational interconnected model of exchange and processes of interculturalization. Mix & Stir wants to expand this landscape by bringing to the fore new, recalcitrant, queer, idiosyncratic practices and discourses, theories and topics, methods and concerns that open up ways to approach art from a global perspective. Analogous to a cookery book filled with recipes and instruction, Mix & Stir explores new outlooks on contemporary art from global perspectives. It intends to encourage studying art beyond national constraints, cultural dominances, and hierarchies: a voyage similar to that of culinary discovery. The book brings a variety of tastes and flavours to the table, and breaks new ground by allowing innovative, contrary, queer, idiosyncratic practices and discourses, theories and topics, methods, and concerns to access art in its global dimensions. Researchers, curators and artists with a special interest in this topical issue were invited to present, develop, outline, and contemplate compelling frames of reference, both theoretical and artistic, in order to arrive at a true ‘world art studies’. Their contributions are structured in seven thematic fields: Undecidability and Spectatorship, Collectives, Circulations, Exhibitions, Artists at Work, Postcolonial Perspectives, and Deep Art History. The reader is invited to explore the vast supply of dishes, to taste and test the aromas and to feast. Illustrated with various black and white images PLURAL Mix & Stir is the fourth title published within the Valiz PLURAL series. PLURALThis series focuses on how the intersections between identity, power, representation and emancipation play out in the arts and in cultural practices. The volumes in this series aim to do justice to the plurality of voices, experiences and perspectives in society and in arts and design. The volumes address historical, present and future meanings of these positions and their interrelations, layering and diversity. PLURAL brings together new and critical insights from cultural and social researchers, theorists, artists, arts professionals and activists. Other PLURAL titles are: ;Design Struggles (2021, red. Claudia Mareis, Nina Paim), ;Shame! and Masculinity (2020, red. Ernst van Alphen) en ;Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms (2020, red. Katy Deepwell).
