In this book, Jacob Lund explores how the conditions for politically engaged art and aesthetic practice, for questioning the present, have changed in recent decades, while considering how our historical present and its temporal quality differ significantly from previous presents.

Taking its point of departure in an “anachronic” exhibition, “Soulèvements” (2016–18), this book is a theoretical exploration of how the notion of contemporaneity—understood as the coming together of different times in the same historical present—relates to the end of a certain history of art.

What do we mean when we say that something is contemporary? And what should the designator “contemporary art” refer to? An immediate response would be that contemporary art is an art of the present, that it somehow addresses and expresses the present. But what is this present? This first book in the Contemporary Condition series introduces some of the key issues concerning contemporaneity as a defining condition of our historical present.