1974: Volvo and the Mise-en-Scène

Endless work. The rise of interface technologies. Contraction, limitation and exit. Resistance through subcultural assertion. The consolidation of the contemporary as a describable practice. The arrival of the curator and an awareness of our condition.

1820: Erasmus and Upheaval

Enclosure. Compromise. Specialization in the light of technology. The development of parallel histories in tension with simultaneous realities. The emergence of the exhibition and the rebel who provokes commentary within a search for settings. The emergence of places of thought versus places of display.

Art as a Pile

There are two fundamentally opposed ways of reading contemporary arts structure, significance and potential.

Nostalgia for the Group

Maybe it’s possible to explain the discursive cultural framework within a context of difference and collectivity, “difference” being the key word that defines our time and “collectivity” being the thing that is so hard to achieve while frequently being so longed for. We have to negotiate and recognize difference and collectivity simultaneously. It is an aspect of social consciousness that is exemplified in the art context. Difference and collectivity as social definitions and processes of recognition feed from the examples of modern and ​contemporary art. Art is nurtured and encouraged in return via cultural permission to be the space for what cannot be tolerated but can be accommodated under the conditions of neoliberal globalization.

The Experimental Factory

Production within a discursive context.

The Complete Curator

The ethical demands of the new curator push ahead of contemporary art.

1948: B. F. Skinner and Counter-Revolution

Nationalization and the rise of the Corporation. The individual and the group. The application of advanced modernism and the emergence of containers for identity. The expression of dystopia and material facts in the face of arts deployment by capital and social.

ASAP Futures, Not Infinite Future

Is there a space for urgency in the projected and parallel structure of contemporary art?

Why Work?

Art is a place where the rules of engagement are open to question. Art is a history of doing nothing and a long tale ​of useful action. It is always a fetishization of decision and indecision—with each mark, structure and, engagement. This book’s challenge to contemporary practitioners, or current artists, is that “contemporary art” no longer accounts for what is being made; it no longer is connected to what we have all become rather than what we might propose, represent, or fail to achieve. The challenge made is that artists today, whether they like it or not, have fallen into a trap predetermined by their existence within a regime that is centered on a rampant capitalization of the mind.

Projection and Parallelism

Projection is at the heart of a political and social structures. Parallelism is the dominant feature of a system based on projection.