Table of Contents
Introduction 1
1 The fiction of the contemporary 15
Together in time?
three periodizations of contemporary art
idea, problem, fiction, task
the global transnational, or, the contemporary today
Joseph Bitar
fictionalization of artistic authority/collectivization of artistic fictions: a First Transnational
2 Art beyond aesthetics 37
Art versus aesthetics (Jena Romanticism contra Kant)
periodization as historical ontology: postconceptual art
a speculative proposition
an image of romanticism (Benjamin, Schlegel, Lewitt)
fragment and sentence
information and series
process and project
3 Modernisms and mediations 71
The double heritage of the modern in art
artistic modernisms: aesthetic, specific, generic
mediations after mediums: nominalism and genre, isms and series
everything, everywhere? Polke and Richter
4 Transcategoriality: postconceptual art 99
Smithson and medium (or, against 'sculpture')
the 'interminable avalanche of categories'
ontology of materializations: non-site
conceptual abstraction and 'pure perception'
5 Photographic ontology, infinite exchange 117
Distributive unity
the photograph: metonymic model of an imagined unity
digitalization, art and the real (or, anxiety about abstraction)
the visible, the invisible and the multiplication of visualizations
6 Art space 133
Non-places and the textualization of art
architecturalization: three questions
construction and expression
art as displaced urbanism: capitalist constructivism of the exhibition-form
transnationalization: art industry
project space
7 Art time 175
Attention and distraction: boredom as possibility
distracted reception (duration and rhythm)
memory or history?
testimonies: three works
expectation as a historical category (critique of Koselleck)
expecting the unexpected: puncturing the horizon
Acknowledgements 213
Notes 215
Bibliography 255
Image credits 271
Index 273
