Editors' Note
(p. 5-6)
Since Conceptualism, the field of art has become
increasingly accustomed to playing host to its
own critique, and recent decades have seen institutions
engaged in self-critique as if by mandate.
Important notions of legibility, autonomy, and
critical engagement that were once necessary
to carve out a space for a critic or critical art
publication have transposed themselves onto
artistic production proper, and are now considered
to be of equal importance to artist, curator,
institution, and engaged audience member alike.
This has made the distance that was once the
bedrock of criticism increasingly hard to come by,
compounded by the fact that those same institutions
have been faced with an entirely widened
base of audiences and professionals, who now
come to the sphere of art from diverse fields and
locations, invariably entering and leaving it as
they wish.
This climate of disciplinary reconfiguration
and geographic dispersal has made the art world
a highly complex place—the objective position
that once defined the role of a critic has been
effectively replaced by a need to understand just
how large and varied the whole thing has become.
The urgent task has now become to engage the
new intellectual territories in a way that can
revitalize the critical vocabulary of contemporary
art. Perhaps the most productive way of doing
this is through a fresh approach to the function
of an art journal as something that situates the
multitude of what is currently available, and
makes that available back to the multitude.
The selection of essays included in this
book seeks to highlight an ongoing topical thread that ran throughout the first eight issues of
e-flux journal—a sequence of overlapping
concerns passed on from one contribution to the
next. While it is our hope that the essays included
here can begin to give a sense of how varied the
concerns and urgencies being engaged today are,
we also expect that certain consistencies and
overarching issues will emerge through them,
and help us shape the forthcoming editions
of the journal.
—Julieta Aranda,
Anton Vidokle, Brian Kuan Wood
Initiated in fall 2008,
e-flux journal is a monthly online art
publication. Its topics and themes are developed through
open-ended invitations to art practitioners and thinkers as
diverse as its readership.
www.e-flux.com/journal
