{"product_id":"9780262297257","title":"Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts","description":"Events are always passing; to experience an event is to experience the passing. But how do we perceive an experience that encompasses the just-was and the is-about-to-be as much as what is actually present? In \u003ci\u003eSemblance and Event\u003c\/i\u003e, Brian Massumi, drawing on the work of William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, and others, develops the concept of \"semblance\" as a way to approach this question. It is, he argues, a question of abstraction, not as the opposite of the concrete but as a dimension of it: \"lived abstraction.\" A semblance is a lived abstraction. Massumi uses the category of the semblance to investigate practices of art that are relational and event-oriented -- variously known as interactive art, ephemeral art, performance art, art intervention -- which he refers to collectively as the \"occurrent arts.\" Each art practice invents its own kinds of relational events of lived abstraction, to produce a signature species of semblance. The artwork's relational engagement, Massumi continues, gives it a political valence just as necessary and immediate as the aesthetic dimension.","brand":"MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47080412676336,"sku":"9780262297257","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780262297257_p0.jpg?v=1763682090","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780262297257","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}