Hotel Theory Reader


Book Description

Hotel Theory Reader explores the possibilities of theory as an art form, bringing together ideas initially explored in an exhibition organized in 2015 at REDCAT - CalArts' Downtown Center for Contemporary Arts. The book assembles a collection of texts by David Antin, Art & Language, Ruth Estévez, Bruce Hainley, Wayne Koestenbaum, Chris Kraus, Snejanka Mihaylova, Sohrab Mohebbi, Cally Spooner, V-Girls, Danna Vajda and Tirdad Zolghadr. Taking its title from Wayne Koestenbaum's 2007 book Hotel Theory (a philosophic enquiry into the hotel state of being), this is the fourth title in Fillip's ongoing Folio Series presenting writing by critics, artists and curators that engages specific and recurring questions on international contemporary art.




Hotel Theory


Book Description

Hotel Theory is two books in one: a meditation on the meaning of hotels, and a dime novel (Hotel Women) featuring Lana Turner and Liberace. Typical of Wayne Koestenbaum’s invigoratingly inventive style, the two books — one fiction, one nonfiction — run concurrently, in twin columns, and the articles “a,” “an,” and “the” never appear. The nonfiction ruminations on hotels are divided into eight dossiers, composed of short takes on the presence of hotels in the author’s dreams as well as in literature, film, and history. Guest stars include everyone from Oscar Wilde to Marilyn Monroe. Hotel Theory gives (divided) voice to an aesthetic of hyperaesthesia, of yearning. It is an oblique manifesto, the place where writing disappears. A new mode of theorizing — in fiction, in fragment, through quotation and palimpsest — arises in this dazzling work.




The Interior Urbanism Theory Reader


Book Description

The Interior Urbanism Theory Reader expands our understanding of urbanism, interiority, and publicness from a global perspective across time and cultures. From ancient origins to speculative futures, this book explores the rich complexities of interior urbanism as an interstitial socio-spatial condition. Employing an interdisciplinary lens, it examines the intersectional characteristics that define interior urbanism. Fifty chapters investigate the topic in relation to architecture, planning, urban design, interior architecture, interior design, archaeology, engineering, sociology, psychology, and geography. Individual essays reveal the historical, typological, and morphological origins of interior urbanism, as well as its diverse scales, occupancies, and atmospheres. The Interior Urbanism Theory Reader will appeal to scholars, practitioners, students, and enthusiasts of urbanism, architecture, planning, interiors, and the social sciences.




The Interior Architecture Theory Reader


Book Description

The Interior Architecture Theory Reader presents a global compilation that collectively and specifically defines interior architecture. Diverse views and comparative resources for interior architecture students, educators, scholars, and practitioners are needed to develop a proper canon for this young discipline. As a theoretical survey of interior architecture, the book examines theory, history, and production to embrace a full range of interior identities in architecture, interior design, digital fabrication, and spatial installation. Authored by leading educators, theorists, and practitioners, fifty chapters refine and expand the discourse surrounding interior architecture.




The New Media Theory Reader


Book Description

The study of new media opens up some of the most fascinating issues in contemporary culture, bringing together key readings on new media, what it is, where it came from, how it affects our lives, and how it is managed. It encourages readers to pay attention to the 'new' in new media, as well as consider it as a historical phenomenon.




The Third Hotel


Book Description

"[A] future cult classic." —The New York Times Book Review "There’s Borges and Bolaño, Kafka and Cortázar, Modiano and Murakami, and now Laura van den Berg." —The Washington Post Finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Award. Named a Best Book of 2018 by The Boston Globe, Huffington Post, Electric Literature and Lit Hub. An August 2018 IndieNext Selection. Named a Summer 2018 Read by The Washington Post, Vulture, Nylon, Elle, BBC, InStyle, Refinery29, Bustle, O, the Oprah Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Harper's Bazaar, Conde Nast Traveler, Southern Living, Lit Hub, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn. In Havana, Cuba, a widow tries to come to terms with her husband’s death—and the truth about their marriage—in Laura van den Berg’s surreal, mystifying story of psychological reflection and metaphysical mystery. Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He’s wearing a white linen suit she’s never seen before, and he’s supposed to be dead. Grief-stricken and baffled, Clare tails Richard, a horror film scholar, through the newly tourist-filled streets of Havana, clocking his every move. As the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard, revealing her role in his death and reappearance along the way. The Third Hotel is a propulsive, brilliantly shape-shifting novel from an inventive author at the height of her narrative powers.




The Paradox Hotel


Book Description

“Time travel, murder, corruption, restless baby dinosaurs, and a snarky robot named Ruby collide in this excellent, noir-inflected, humor-infused, science-fiction thriller.”—The Boston Globe An impossible crime. A detective on the edge of madness. The future of time travel at stake. From the author of The Warehouse . . . ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, Kirkus Reviews January Cole’s job just got a whole lot harder. Not that running security at the Paradox was ever really easy. Nothing’s simple at a hotel where the ultra-wealthy tourists arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting to catch their “flights” to the past. Or where proximity to the timeport makes the clocks run backward on occasion—and, rumor has it, allows ghosts to stroll the halls. None of that compares to the corpse in room 526. The one that seems to be both there and not there. The one that somehow only January can see. On top of that, some very important new guests have just checked in. Because the U.S. government is about to privatize time-travel technology—and the world’s most powerful people are on hand to stake their claims. January is sure the timing isn’t a coincidence. Neither are those “accidents” that start stalking their bidders. There’s a reason January can glimpse what others can’t. A reason why she’s the only one who can catch a killer who’s operating invisibly and in plain sight, all at once. But her ability is also destroying her grip on reality—and as her past, present, and future collide, she finds herself confronting not just the hotel’s dark secrets but her own. At once a dazzlingly time-twisting murder mystery and a story about grief, memory, and what it means to—literally—come face-to-face with our ghosts, The Paradox Hotel is another unforgettable speculative thrill ride from acclaimed author Rob Hart.




A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader


Book Description

When first published in 1992, The Critical and Cultural Theory Reader served the growing need for essays and extracts for the study of culture. Now, the second and expanded edition of this highly successful reader reflects the growing diversity of the field and includes thirteen new essays.




Feminist Theory Reader


Book Description

Feminist Theory Reader is an anthology of classic and contemporary works of feminist theory, organized around the goal of providing both local and global perspectives.




Hotel London


Book Description

Hotel London: How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories examines Victorian London's grand hotels as both an institution and a culture intimately connected to the urban landscape. In her new study, Barbara Black argues that London's grand hotels provided an essential space for socializing, fashioned by concerns relating to class, gender, and nationality. Rooted in Walter Benjamin's "new velocities" of the nineteenth century and Wayne Koestenbaum's hotel theory, Hotel London explores how the emergence of the grand hotel as a physical and metaphorical space helped to construct a consumer economy that underscored London's internationalism and, by extension, England's global status. Incorporating the works of Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Wilkie Collins, Arnold Bennett, Florence Marryat, and Marie Belloc Lowndes, as well as contemporary depictions of the hotels in Mad Men, American Horror Story, and The Grand Budapest Hotel, Black examines how the hotel supported a corporate identity that would ultimately assist in the rise of modern capitalist structures and the middle class. In this way, Hotel London exposes the aggravations of class stratifications through the operations of status inside hotel life, giving a unique perspective on Victorian London that could only come from the stories of a hotel.