Books in the Afterall Books / One Work series

A nuanced reading of an artwork that explores a place, transitory and pastoral, where childhood might be lived and imagined differently

An illustrated examination of one of Hirschhorn's "precarious" monuments, now dismantled.

An examination of the complex and subtle world on display in Rodney Graham's film of an LSD-inflected bicycle ride.

An illustrated study that casts a new light on Oiticica's most important work of "quasi-cinema" on its fortieth anniversary.

The first sustained examination of a canonical and widely exhibited work by a leading artist of the former Yugoslavia.

An examination of Pierre Huyghe''s post-apocalyptic Untitled (Human Mask), which asks whether our human future may be one of remnants and mimicry.Pierre Huyghe''s 2014 film Untitled (Human Mask) combines images of a post-apocalyptic world (actual footage of deserted streets close to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of March 2011) with a haunting scene of a monkey working in an empty restaurant wearing a human mask and a wig. She''s a girl! The flat, emotionless almost automaton state of the mask and the artificial glossy hair topped even with a child''s bow, suggests that she, the monkey, might be a character from Japanese Noh theatre. But there''s no music. Instead Huyghe''s film evinces the terrifying possibility that our own, human, future might just be one of remnants and mimicry; that the deserted streets of Fukushima and the monkey''s recognizable, alienating chimeric performance is all that might survive us. Untitled (Human Mask) presents a pluperfect world with extinction the endgame for a civilization that cared little for the present, dreaming only of a future that inevitably and necessarily could not include it.

An illustrated study of Hanne Darboven's masterwork, the massive Kulturgeschichte 1880-1983 (Cultural History 1880-1983).

A critical close-up of Warhol's famous film and its cultural impact

A richly illustrated study of Marc Chaimowicz's groundbreaking 1972 post-Pop installation-performance piece Celebration? Realife.

A critical examination of Dara Birnbaum's action-packed and riveting video of Wonder Woman's transformations.

An illustrated study of Mary Heilmann's seductive 1979 abstract painting in hot pink and black, Save the Last Dance for Me.