[artinfo] A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art

[e-flux]

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst

Future Publics (The Rest Can and Should Be Done 
by the People): A Critical Reader in Contemporary 
Art

Edited by Maria Hlavajova and Ranjit Hoskote

<http://www.bakonline.org/
>www.bakonline.org
<http://www.valiz.nl/en/>www.valiz.nl

Published by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, 
Utrecht and Valiz, book and cultural projects, 
Amsterdam

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst and Valiz are proud 
to announce the release of Future Publics (The 
Rest Can and Should Be Done by the People): A 
Critical Reader in Contemporary Art.

Future Publics (The Rest Can and Should Be Done 
by the People): A Critical Reader in Contemporary 
Art, edited by Maria Hlavajova (artistic director 
of BAK, Utrecht) and Ranjit Hoskote (cultural 
theorist, poet, and curator, Mumbai), brings 
together contributions by artists, theorists, and 
activists to reflect on radically new 
publics-forward-looking yet pre-figurative, 
situated yet nomadic-as they emerge from the 
experiences of social crisis and political 
uncertainty that characterize our present. These 
future publics are provisional assemblies that 
question existing mechanisms of collective 
organization and constructions of social value 
and cultural meaning, recognizing that the 
institutions of public life cannot continue with 
a "business-as-usual" attitude as late capital's 
certitudes collapse and entrenched regimes are 
being challenged across the globe. Resisting 
conscription into formal definitions of 
citizenship, these publics shape new solidarities 
that cut across conventional lines of class, 
region, ethnicity, and ideological affiliation. 
In the field of art, they demonstrate a renewed, 
insurgent, and self-critical capacity for 
engagement, rejecting the passive observation of 
the "viewer," the commodifying gaze of the 
"consumer," and the stylized participation of the 
"spectator." Through these accounts, the 
contributors assemble a vocabulary relevant to 
artistic practices and civic conclaves mobilized 
outside the ossified institutions: among 
propositions such as rebel citizenry, orgnets, 
cultural users, stateless states, and 
devolutionary platforms, they articulate and 
address ways of being and doing beyond those that 
have been established within the neoliberal 
paradigm of "the contemporary."

With contributions by: Nancy Adajania (cultural 
theorist and curator, Bombay); Ariella Azoulay 
(theorist, curator, and filmmaker, Providence); 
Amelia Barikin (art historian and writer, 
Brisbane) and Nikos Papastergiadis (theorist, 
Melbourne); Bassam El Baroni (curator and writer, 
Alexandria); Manuel Beltrán (artist, activist, 
and designer, The Hague); David Graeber 
(anthropologist, London) and Michelle Kuo (writer 
and editor, New York); Tom Holert (art historian 
and critic, Berlin); Brian Holmes (art and 
cultural critic, Chicago); Geert Lovink (media 
theorist, Amsterdam); El›bieta Matynia 
(sociologist, New York) and Joanna Warsza 
(researcher, writer, and curator, Berlin and 
Warsaw); Simon Sheikh (curator and writer, Berlin 
and London); Jonas Staal (artist, Rotterdam); and 
Stephen Wright (theorist, writer, and curator, 
Paris).

Future Publics (The Rest Can and Should Be Done 
by the People): A Critical Reader in Contemporary 
Art is the sixth publication in BAK's Critical 
Reader Series. The series comprises select 
collections of new and anthologized propositional 
writings by a rich array of artists, art 
historians, philosophers, theorists, activists, 
and other thinkers grappling-with, from, and 
through the prism of contemporary art-with what 
we believe to be the critical matters of our 
time. Other publications in the series include We 
Roma (2013), On Horizons (2011), The Return of 
Religion and other Myths (2009), On Knowledge 
Production (2008), and Concerning War 
(2006/2010). These publications are paralleled by 
a series of BAK Critical Readers in Artists' 
Practice, within which a compendium of writings 
appeared in 2012 on the practice of artist, 
actor, director, and playwright Rabih Mroué. A 
forthcoming reader on the practice of 
Berlin-based artist and cultural researcher 
Marion von Osten will be released in 2016.

To order a copy of Future Publics (The Rest Can 
and Should Be Done by the People): A Critical 
Reader in Contemporary Art, please e-mail: 
<mailto:info at bakonline.org>info at bakonline.org or 
visit the website of Valiz at: 
<http://www.valiz.nl/en/>www.valiz.nl.

Realization of this publication has been made 
possible by financial support from the DOEN 
Foundation, Amsterdam and the Creative Europe 
Programme of the European Union.
The activities of BAK, basis voor actuele kunst 
have been made possible by financial support from 
the City Council of Utrecht and the Ministry of 
Education, Culture, and Science of the 
Netherlands. 

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