Max Ryynänen

Kaiken maailman räppiä on ensimmäinen suomenkielinen tietokirja, joka käsittelee muuta kuin amerikkalaista tai suomalaista rap-musiikkia.

This book seeks to understand culture through the lens of scenes, analyzing them aesthetically and culturally as well as understanding them through the frameworks of gender, social networks, and artworlds. It is common to talk about the cultural and intellectual scenes of early twentieth-century Vienna, the visual art scene of postwar New York, and the music and fashion scene of the swinging London. We often think about artists and works of art as essentially belonging to a certain scene. Scenes might offer a new approach to study what is possible, what is a tradition, and/or to discuss what are the relevant units of contemporary culture for research. The book posits that scenes explain a lot about how the artworld and the cultural field function. Vivienne Westwood, Rene Magritte, Roman Jakobson, Arthur C. Danto, Susan Sontag, James Baldwin, and Didier Eribon are among the figures included in the book, which examines scenes in cities such as Moscow, Bombay, New York, London, Paris, Brussels, Helsinki, and Bratislava. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, cultural studies, philosophy, film, literature, and urban studies.

This book builds a new understanding of the body and its relationship to images and technology, using a framework where novel writings of pragmatist somaesthetics and phenomenology meet new research on bodily reactions. Max Ryynänen gives an overview of the topic by collecting the existing information of our bodies gazing at visual culture and the philosophies supporting these phenomena, and examines the way the gaze and the body come together in our relationship to culture. Themes covered include somatic film; the body in artistic documentation of activist art; body parts (and their mutilation or surgeries) in contemporary art and film; robot cars and our visual relationship to them; the usefulness of Indian rasa philosophy in explaining digital culture; and an examination of Mario Perniola’s work about the idea that we, human beings, are increasingly experiencing ourselves to be simply "things." The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, aesthetics, cultural philosophy, film studies, technology studies, media studies, cultural studies, and visual studies.

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s lifework has been studied through the lens of queer studies, film studies, poetry, and many other angles, but there are themes that one could still study. This book aims to bring forth a new understanding of Pasolini as someone who worked in various arts, and through appropriating one art with. Max Ryynänen shows Pasolini’s importance for not just film and film theory, but more broadly visual studies, art research and even cultural philosophy – where Pasolini can be seen to be a real pioneer in discussing unprivileged margins in the society. Ryynänen reads Pasolini not just as a semiotician of film, but also as a cultural philosopher, and argues for that interpretation.

This book seeks to understand culture through the lens of scenes, analyzing them aesthetically and culturally as well as understanding them through the frameworks of gender, social networks, and artworlds. It is common to talk about the cultural and intellectual scenes of early twentieth-century Vienna, the visual art scene of postwar New York, and the music and fashion scene of the swinging London. We often think about artists and works of art as essentially belonging to a certain scene. Scenes might offer a new approach to study what is possible, what is a tradition, and/or to discuss what are the relevant units of contemporary culture for research. The book posits that scenes explain a lot about how the artworld and the cultural field function. Vivienne Westwood, Rene Magritte, Roman Jakobson, Arthur C. Danto, Susan Sontag, James Baldwin, and Didier Eribon are among the figures included in the book, which examines scenes in cities such as Moscow, Bombay, New York, London, Paris, Brussels, Helsinki, and Bratislava. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, cultural studies, philosophy, film, literature, and urban studies.

Epäkirjailija Armas J. Pulla on esseistinen rakkaudentunnustus kirjailija, mainosmies, kulinaristi ja käsikirjoittaja Armas J. Pullan elämäntyölle. Käsikirjoitusten ja lehtiartikkelien lisäksi Pulla julkaisi lähes sata teosta, ja hän oli sotien jälkeisen Suomen keskeisiä sivistyspersoonallisuuksia, joka oli tuttu näky myös televisiossa. Rami Nummen ja Max Ryynäsen kirja kartoittaa Pullan perintöä pikareskimaisesta historiankirjoittamisesta kulttuuriperinnön puolustamiseen ja anekdoottien keräilyyn. Pulla itse kutsui itseään epäkirjailijaksi, ja hänen kevyt, leikkisä kirjoitustyylinsä on toiminut mallina Epäkirjailija Armas J. Pullalle. Nummi ja Ryynänen käyvät läpi Pullan valtaisaa perintöä hankauksia ja eksymisen kokemuksia kaihtamatta.

Mechelinin tähtiä polemisoi ruokaa, ravintoloita, kokkaamista jakulinarismia - kärkeviä näkemyksiä kaihtamatta. Se on vastaiskulipevälle ja ruusuiselle ruokakirjoittamiselle, kurkistus karmeisiinruokaloihin, ruoan banaaliin kansallistamiseen, ravintoloihinetnisyyden näyttämöinä ja robottien rooliin ruokatuotannossa. Se onyritys elvyttää varhaisen gastronomisen kirjallisuuden kuumeistalennokkuutta uusin maustein.

This book builds a new understanding of the body and its relationship to images and technology, using a framework where novel writings of pragmatist somaesthetics and phenomenology meet new research on bodily reactions. Max Ryynänen gives an overview of the topic by collecting the existing information of our bodies gazing at visual culture and the philosophies supporting these phenomena, and examines the way the gaze and the body come together in our relationship to culture. Themes covered include somatic film; the body in artistic documentation of activist art; body parts (and their mutilation or surgeries) in contemporary art and film; robot cars and our visual relationship to them; the usefulness of Indian rasa philosophy in explaining digital culture; and an examination of Mario Perniola’s work about the idea that we, human beings, are increasingly experiencing ourselves to be simply "things." The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, aesthetics, cultural philosophy, film studies, technology studies, media studies, cultural studies, and visual studies.

This book is an introduction to the history of the concept and the institution of (fine) art, from its ancient Southern European roots to the establishment of the modern system of the arts in eighteenth century Central Europe. It highlights the way the concept and institution of (fine) art, through colonialism and diaspora, conquered the world. Ryynänen presents globally competing frameworks from India to Japan but also describes how the art system debased local European artistic cultures (by women, members of the working class, etc) and how art with the capital A appropriated not just non-Western but also Western alternatives to art (popular culture). The book discusses alternative art forms such as sport, kitsch, and rap music as pockets of resistance and resources for future concepts of art. Ultimately, the book introduces nobrow as an alternative to high and low, a new concept that sheds light on the democratic potentials of the field of art and invites reader to rethink the nature of art.

Architectural decay as well as the reasons, effects, appearance and representation of ruination have always been important sources of understanding the state of our culture. The essays in this co-written book offer broad perspectives on the potential of ruins, on the use and appropriation of derelict architecture and on the aesthetics and also touristification of places by analysing a variety of phenomena in the range from classical to fake ruins, from historic city centres to hot dog stands, from debris to theme parks. The survey travels from Tallin through Venice and Istanbul to Beirut, discussing among others actual spaces, allegorical monuments and nostalgic aestheticisations of the past in high and popular culture, thus showing numerous inspiring opportunities of learning from decay.