This issue grew out of two physical incarnations of The Serving Library in 2011. The first took place from July 4–August 10 in the Walter Phillips Gallery of the Visual Arts department at The Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada. Here we set up a model of the library’s projected interior to house a six-week summer school titled From the Toolbox of a Serving Library. The school comprised daily morning seminars, supplemented by a few evening events. Each week was based on a specific component from a (Photoshop-proxy) digital software toolbox, in order to reconsider what a contemporary (Bauhaus-proxy) Foundation Course might ...

This issue was produced as part of The End(s) of the Library, a series of exhibitions at the Goethe-Institut New York Library organized by Jenny Jaskey from October 30, 2012 to June 21, 2013; hence the German theme. The Serving Library was resident for three months at the end of The End(s), from April Fools’ Day on, in the form of a hang of objects from our collection of source material. if all went according to plan, the end of the library show was marked by the launch of this issue. *Wie ein Pfeil lief ich einfach durch.* With many thanks to ...

Following the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, doctor and New Age guru Deepak Chopra commented on CNN that perhaps the worst thing for terrorist groups would be for someone like President-elect Obama to befriend the Muslim world and turn them against terrorists—simple as that! Such a statement is symptomatic of the idea that power today should, whenever possible, be exercised through attraction and seduction rather than through direct coercion. Joseph Nye, one of the intellectual fathers of neoliberalism, has termed the genteel, salesman-like diplomacy that emerged after the Cold War “soft power”: the ability of a political body such as ...

What is contemporary art? First, and most obviously: why is this question not asked? That is to say, why do we simply leave it to hover in the shadow of attempts at critical summation in the grand tradition of twentieth-century artistic movements? The contemporary delineates its border invisibly: no one is proud to be “contemporary,” and no one is ashamed. Indeed, the question of where artistic movements have gone seems embedded in this question, if only because “the contemporary” has become a single hegemonic “ism” that absorbs all proposals for others. When there are no longer any artistic movements, it ...

Released on October 8, the second issue of the Occupied Wall Street Journal included an editorial note entitled “No list of demands,” responding to the perceived absence of strong messaging offered by the movement. The note specified that:.. Editorial Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle The Time That Remains, Part I: On Contemporary Nihilism Sotirios Bahtsetzis The Contemporary Is Still Forthcoming Jalal Toufic World as Medium: On the Work of Stano Filko Jan Verwoert Queer Temporalities and the Chronopolitics of Transtemporal Drag Antke Engel Neo-Materialism, Part Three: The Language of Commodities Joshua Simon Eupalinos and the Duck: Conceptualism in Recent Architecture Mona Mahall Letters to the Editors: Responses to Jon Rich’s “The Blood ...

Just what is it that leads many contemporary artists to restage historic events great and small, performances of the past, and sometimes even imaginary events? Are they possessed by the post-modern demon? (albeit belatedly…) Does this practice spring from a cynical awareness of the decline of values, the surrender—be it dismal or joyful, it makes little difference—to the logic of the society of spectacle? Is it yet another variation of Francis Fukuyama’s bitter prophecy of “the end of history”? Or is it simply the end of the modern myth of the “originality” of the work of art, a further confirmation of the ...

This year’s Annual is published in tandem with a long-term installation of The Serving Library’s collection of (mostly) framed objects at 019, an artist-run exhibition, performance and work space in a former welding factory in Ghent, Belgium. Apparently, the sole common denominator of the objects in the collection — which range from paintings, photographs, and record sleeves, to a can of green paint, a German car license plate, and an ouija board — is to have appeared as illustrations in an issue of The Serving Library Annual or one of its immediate antecedents, Bulletins of The Serving Library or Dot Dot ...

What makes a city urban? In a way this is a primary question of the political. Given that polis means “city”, literally speaking, the term political designates matters that pertain to life in town. Etymology is no substitute for actual experience of such matters. But it might open up a path to some of the experiences that a term got charged with in (what may have been) its original context of use. So if we accentuate the presence of polis in political and amp up its resonances, the question “how is this political?” will start to resonate with questions like “how ...

This book began as a two-part issue of e-flux journal devoted to the question: What is contemporary art? First, and most obviously: why is this question not asked? That is to say, why do we simply leave it to hover in the shadow of attempts at critical summation in the grand tradition of twentieth-century artistic movements? A single hegemonic “ism” has replaced clearly distinguishable movements and grand narratives. But what exactly does it mean to be working under the auspices of this singular ism? Widespread usage of the term “contemporary” seems so self-evident that to further demand a definition of “contemporary ...

It is often said that we no longer have an addressee for our political demands. But that’s not true. We have each other. What we can no longer get from the state, the party, the union, the boss, we ask for from one another. And we provide. Let’s see how need and care and desire and admiration have been cross-examined, called as witness, put on parole, made the subject of caring inquiry by e-flux journal authors since 2009.