CONCERNING WAR:

A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art

In the second edition of this idea-packed reader – first published to accompany the 2005 exhibition, “Soft Target. War as a Daily, First-Hand Reality” at BAK – artists, curators, theorists and others speak on the urgent subject of war in the post-9/11 world. The voices of artists are still needed to make sense of the current state of global conflict, financial meltdown and ecological disasters such as the BP oil spill. This edition, based on the “Undercurrents” series of symposia and conversations which followed the original show, includes a new preface and an extensive index, which allows key themes within the contributions to become visible on another level. With contributions by Ross Birrell, Boris Buden, Jordan Crandall, Bregje van Eekelen, Boris Groys, Viktor Misiano, Irit Rogoff, Martha Rosler, Sean Snyder and Hito Steyerl.

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CONTEMPORARY ART AND ITS COMMERCIAL MARKETS

A Report on Current Conditions and Future Scenarios

Maria Lind & Olav Velthuis (Eds.)

How will artists and galleries produce and distribute their work? How much money will everyone make? This pocket-sized reader provides a provocative look into the future by mapping the complex entanglements of contemporary art and its commercial markets. In cheeky, controversial essays, critics, academics and artists offer insights into the artwork as an asset category and celebrity accessory, the rise of the art fair and the increased competition of auction houses. The first in a series from Temsta Konsthall and Sternberg Press.

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INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS ON CONTEMPORANEITY AND CONTEMPORARY ART

Geoff Cox & Jacob Lund

Geoff Cox & Jacob Lund (Eds.)

What do we mean when we say that something is contemporary? And what should the designator “contemporary art” refer to? What constitutes the present present or the contemporary contemporary? Introductory Thoughts on Contemporaneity and Contemporary Art, the first book in the Contemporary Condition series, introduces key issues concerning contemporaneity as a defining condition of our historical present and calls for a deep rethinking of the structures of temporalization.

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THE CONTEMPORARY COMPOSITION

Terry Smith

Geoff Cox & Jacob Lund (Eds.)

Can we speak of composition when we are in a state of decomposition? Art being made today as the world spins into chaos and disorder defies coherent categorization. Revising his well-known histories of contemporary art, Terry Smith argues that visual artists must respond to the compelling need for order and composition during this time of divisive difference. This second volume in the Contemporary Condition series traces how visual artists across the globe are rising to this challenge.

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A SLOW, CONTEMPORARY VIOLENCE: DAMAGED ENVIRONMENTS OF TECHNOLOGICAL CULTURE

Jussi Parikka

Geoff Cox & Jacob Lund (Eds.)

The contemporary moment is comprised of many overlapping speeds, rhythms and periods of time. Damaged Environments of Technological Culture, the third volume of the Contemporary Condition series, concerns slowness: a different temporal horizon in which to understand the environmental temporalities of media and technological arts. Jussi Parikka looks at art and design practices closely entwined with aesthetic theories that unfold the multiplicity of time, to understand and engage planetary time scales of slow environmental violence.

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COOL PASTORAL SPLENDOR

Central Pivot Series – Volume I

Richard Saxton, Kurt Wagner & Kirsten Stoltz (Eds.)

The introductory volume in the exciting new Center Pivot Series from Colorado- based M12’s Last Chance Press curated by Kirsten Stoltz pulses with diverse rural American images, poems and writings. Pictures from M12 founder Richard Saxton’s Rural Research Archive and writings by Kurt Wagner focus on the nonheroic, psychic and lyrical unfolding of daily events and leave us in search of beauty hidden in plain sight. Saxton and Wagner are among a rare breed of artists who infuse the work with their own rural experiences, allowing no single genre to capture the whole of these intentions. This exciting new series archives the explorations of a growing community of artists and researchers drawn to the complexity of the rural experience, an arena in which art and environmental activism crosses. Pocket-sized and easy to travel with, Cool Pastoral Splendor includes drawings, photographs and hip accounts in the field by like-minded artists, musicians, poets and writers.

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CORNERSTONES

Juan A. Gaitán, Nicolaus Schafhausen and Monica Szewczyk

If it’s not an oxymoron to describe something as both distinguished and cutting edge, that’s the perfect description for Rotterdam’s Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. This illustrated softcover book brings together a series of essays on contemporary art based on the center’s high-octane Cornerstones lecture series. At each of the monthly lectures, one leading art historian focuses on one artist who is foundational to contemporary art. Among this volume’s treasures are Donald Kuspit on Louise Bourgeois, Helmut Friedel on Gerhard Richter, Vanessa Joan Müller on John Baldessari and Douglas Crimp onGordon Matta-Clark. These essays share the fascination that each of the authors has with the work of an artist and how this work functions in relation to larger contexts and broader ideas.

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DANILO CORREALE

No More Sleep No More

Edited by New York–based Italian critical theorist, researcher and artist Danilo Correale, No More Sleep No More is the result of a three-year research study on wakefulness and sleep in postmodernity. Originally shown as a video, the hardcover compendium transcribes Correale’s sensorial video essay, which features an impressive list of scholars on the topic of time in everyday life, including David M. Rapoport, Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, Roger e kirch, Simon Williams, Alan Derickson, Murray Melbin, Alexei Penzin and Reena Patel.

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DOUGLAS COUPLAND

Shopping in Jail Ideas, Essays, and Stories for the Increasingly Real Twenty-First Century

In Douglas Coupland’s writing, the doldrums of a world afflicted by the pains of dotcom booms and busts, the ascendency of subcultures to pop cultures, and the subsequent struggle for identity are counterbalanced by droll, personal, and incisive analyses. This collection of nonfiction essays provides an illuminating meander through what we call culture today.

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CREATIVITY AND OTHER FUNDAMENTALISMS

Pascal Gielen

The magic word these days is “creativity,” and not just for artists: business managers and policymakers alike demand it. Even family therapists and mediators urge us to find more creative solutions. At present, creativity is all about positive morality. But what remains of the meaning of the word when just about everyone is using it to death? And where does this hunger for creativity come from? Isn’t it instead a sign of a creeping loss of true creativity? Author Pascal Gielen, the director of the research center Arts in Society at Groningen University and a specialist on art and Post-Fordism, relates the story of the process of the social (re)creation of creativity by taking readers on a fictive eight-day journey. The second in a series issued by the Mondriaan Fund to promote thinking about visual art and artisthood.

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