Prof. Dr. Brian Holmes
Brian Holmes is an art and cultural critic with a taste for on-the-ground intervention. Living in Paris from 1990 to 2009, he collaborated with political art groups such as Ne Pas Plier, Bureau d'Etudes, Public Netbase, Hackitectura, Makrolab, and published in Multitudes, Springerin, and Brumaria. With Claire Pentecost and the 16 Beaver Group he co-organized the Continental Drift seminars. His essays revolve around art, free cooperation, the network society, political economy, and grassroots resistance. His books include Escape the Overcode: Activist Art in the Control Society and Unleashing the Collective Phantoms: Essays in Reverse Imagineering, as well as a recent co-authored book on the Chicago financial markets entitled Volatile Smile (with photographers Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann). In Chicago, where he now lives, he is a member of the Compass group and teaches at the University of Illinois. Recent collaborative projects can be seen at http://southwestcorridornorthwestpassage.org and http://midwestcompass.org/watersheds/map.html. Text archive of older work at http://brianholmes.wordpress.com