What Is Contemporary Art? out now on Sternberg Press
e-flux journal is pleased to announce the release of the second in its ongoing series of books published by Sternberg Press, entitled What Is Contemporary Art?What is contemporary art? First, and most obviously: why is this question not asked? That is to say, why do we simply leave it to hover in the shadow of attempts at critical summation in the grand tradition of twentieth-century artistic movements? The contemporary delineates its border invisibly: no one is proud to be “contemporary,” and no one is ashamed. Indeed, the question of where artistic movements have gone seems embedded in this question, if only because “the contemporary” has become a single hegemonic “-ism” that absorbs all proposals for others. When there are no longer any artistic movements, it seems that we are all working under the auspices of this singular -ism that is deliberately (and literally) not one at all…
With texts by Zdenka Badovinac, Hu Fang, Hal Foster, Boris Groys, Jörg Heiser, Carol Yinghua Lu, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Raqs Media Collective, Dieter Roelstraete, Martha Rosler, and Jan Verwoert.
This book began as a two-part issue of e-flux journal devoted to the question “What is contemporary art?” based on a conference by the same name organized by Anton Vidokle in Shanghai in 2009. What Is Contemporary Art? puts the apparent simplicity of this self-evident term into doubt, asking critics, curators, artists, and theorists to contemplate the nature of this single hegemonic “-ism” that has replaced clearly distinguishable movements and historical narratives.
Edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, and Anton Vidokle.
To order a copy, please contact Sternberg Press sales: tatjana@sternberg-press.com
Other titles from e-flux journal:
e-flux journal reader 2009
Coming this Fall:
Boris Groys, Going Public
e-flux journal reader 2010
