One of the most significant shifts in contemporary art during the past two decades concerns artists and collectives who have moved their artistic focus from representation to direct social action. This publication shows why this transition might change our understanding of artistic production at large and make us reconsider the role of art in society.

Drawing together discourses on contemporaneity and new materialisms, this book examines a material conception of temporality that makes it possible to develop a critique of the philosophical discourse on presence. Claiming that “there is no now,” Ebeling develops an archaeology of contemporaneity according to which the traces of the contemporary can only be secured through visual or material operations, not historical ones.

Intersubjectivity, a two-volume collection of essays, is concerned with a new account of our ideas of what subjects are, and what it means for them to meet. The project explores these concepts in the context of the interaction of non-sentient beings, attempting to move beyond anthropomorphic theories of objectivity and materiality, as well as subjects whose boundaries resist definition.

A symbolic interruption of everyday life, Yael Bartana’s Two Minutes of Standstill was a political act, social sculpture, and collective performance. This catalogue reveals the ideas behind the work and the process that led to its realization. The book includes several essays that discuss possible interpretations and consequences of the artwork, questioning the role of history and commemoration in Germany today.

In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in.