The Past is the Present; It's the Future Too: The Temporal Turn in Contemporary Art

The term ‘temporality' often refers to the traditional mode of the way time is: a linear procession of past, present and future. As philosophers will note, this is not always the case. Christine Ross builds on current philosophical and theoretical examinations of time and applies them to the field of contemporary art: films, video installations, sculpture and performance works. Ross first provides an interdisciplinary overview of contemporary studies on time, focusing on findings in philosophy, psychology, sociology, communications, history, postcolonial studies, and ecology. She then illustrates how contemporary artistic practices play around with what we consider linear time. Engaging the work of artists such as Guido van der Werve, Melik Ohanian, Harun Farocki, and Stan Douglas, allows investigation though the art, as opposed to having art taking an ancillary role. The Past is the Present; It's the Future Too forces the reader to understand the complexities of the significance of temporal development in new artistic practices.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Chapter 1: The Contemporaneity of Temporal Investigations Chapter 2: Unproductive Time Chapter 3: The Recent Past as a Quasi-Remnant Chapter 4: The Age Value of the Work of Art Chapter 5: Simultaneity I Chapter 6: Simultaneity II Chapter 7: The Historical Sublime, or Longue durée Revisited Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Christine Ross is Professor and James McGill Chair in Contemporary Art History in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, Canada.

Review :
As precisely as the movements of a ticking clock, Christine Ross measures and progresses steadily (and at times playfully) through the unruly and seemingly vast topic of temporality in contemporary art. Combining current research in philosophy, aesthetics, and the social and neurosciences with thoughtful and elegant analyses of artworks, her painstaking writing helps us to see the present in surprising and profound ways. --Jane Blocker, Professor of Art History, University of Minnesota, USA, and author of Seeing Witness: Visuality and the Ethics of Testimony An informed and rigorous exploration of modern and contemporary ideas of time, and the ways in which these ideas form distinct practices in contemporary media arts