Erasure: The Spectre
of Cultural Memory explores key issues around the increasing
aesthetic and cultural erasure occurring in our society. It moves from the
seminal act of the American Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg erasing a drawing by
the painter Willem de Kooning in 1953, perhaps signalling that an echo or trace
would be all that is valued in the future, to the impact that the new
technologies – such as Twitter, Facebook, email, smartphones, snapchat and
Instagram – are having on family, class, sex, time, speed and space.



This erasure is driven by new media technology,
globalisation, and new structures of education, work, home and consumption. Erasure: The Spectre of Cultural Memory is the first book
that brings together artists, curators, scholars and thinkers who are, in their
respective contexts, at the forefront of these compelling questions.