This incisive book invites us to rethink culture during the development of fossil modernity. From a new critical paradigm, Jaime Vindel analyzes the relationship between the energy transformations driven by the Industrial Revolution, the hegemonic social imaginaries and the acceleration of the ecosocial crisis, between the creation of the steam engine at the dawn of the 19th century and the global warming that haunts and conditions us today.
From this starting point, this book sets itself the task of plotting a political ecology of the history of art, visual culture and cultural imaginaries of the Anthropocene, and it does so beyond its explicitly ecological expressions. For that reason, the investigation does not deal only in representative terms with the presence of fossil energy sources (above all, coal and oil) in the forms and institutions of art and culture, but describes how they have constituted a sort of low continuum that subtly and persistently conditions the socio-political processes of the last two centuries. As it happens with any ideological expression, the relationship between culture and fossilism is all the more effective where it does not appear in an evident way.
This book is responsible for delving into these blind corners of our historical unconscious with the intention of contributing to imagine and embody a post-fossilist culture.

Jaime Vindel is European Doctor in History of Art and Master in Philosophy and Social Sciences and Researcher Ramón y Cajal at the Instituto de Historia del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. He has been coordinator of the «Ecologías culturales» module of the Programa de Estudios Independientes (PEI) of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA, 2017-2018/2019-2020). He is author of books such as Estética fósil. Imaginarios de la energía y crisis ecosocial (Arcadia, 2020), La Familia Lavapiés: arte, cultura e izquierda radical en la transición española (La Bahía, 2019), Transparente opacidad. Arte conceptual en los límites del lenguaje y la política (Brumaria, 2015, 2016 and 2019) o La vida por asalto: arte, política e historia en Argentina entre 1965 y 2001 (Brumaria, 2014). He edited the book Visualidades críticas y ecologías culturales (Brumaria, 2018) and (with Jesús Carrillo) the issue number 8 of Desacuerdos. Sobre arte, políticas y esfera pública en el Estado español (MACBA, 2014).

Cultura fósil. Arte, cultura y política entre la Revolución industrial y el calentamiento global
Jaime Vindel
Akal, 2023
ISNB: 978-84-460-5334-7

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