Art and Contemporaneity

Art is often said to be timeless, but specific works of art always take place within time and maintain a dynamic balance between their conditions of production and reception.

Art and Contemporaneity features contributions from leading scholars, including Alain Badiou and Alexander Garcia Duttmann, who bring theories of aesthetic philosophy to bear on one of the most crucial questions about contemporary art: how do works of art come to exist within and in relation to time? A specific temporality of an artwork emerges from the material and political conditions of its production. But works of art also forge new relationships to time in their reception, which are continually superimposed upon layers of history. With a broad range of perspectives, Art and Contemporaneity offers a sustained reflection on the relationship between art and time, and it will appeal to those interested in both the theory and practice of contemporary art.

Frank Ruda is interim professor of philosophy of audiovisual media at Bauhaus University, Weimar, and a visiting lecturer at Bard College Berlin.Jan Voelker is a research associate at the Institute of Fine Arts and Aesthetics at the Berlin University of the Arts and a visiting lecturer at Bard College Berlin.