Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989
- Submitting institution
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Goldsmiths' College
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 2429
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- MIT Press
- ISBN
- 9780262533836
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- March
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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A - Art
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989 was the culmination of an eight-year curatorial research experiment that posed the fundamental question: why hasn’t the West simply become “former,” like its supposed counterpart, the “former East”? Former West asked what has become of the so-called West after the Cold War, and after the tripartite division of the world into first, second, and third has supposedly been superseded? Thus proposing a double conceptual challenge: First; formulating what a former West could be, secondly; to create analytical and artistic tools for ‘formerising’ the West._x000D_
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The research took place over a series of formats - exhibitions, interviews, case studies, seminars and research congresses - inquiring into the repercussions of the political, cultural, and economic events of 1989 as they have shaped both art and the contemporary. As the contours of the book emerged, positing that contemporary art is the place in which we can see and understand what ’the contemporary’ means as a condition of historical time, the editors developed a new format of Open Editorial meetings, where contributors were asked present their ideas, clustered around specific themes that then formed the various chapters in the book itself._x000D_
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The publication, comprising writings, visual essays, and conversations from more than 70 contributors, is divided into seven sections, each re-inscribing contemporary debates through the notion of a “former West”. Hlavajova and Sheikh collaborated on all aspects of the structuring and commissioning, with, Chapters IV, V and VI edited by Sheikh, and with the first and final chapter being 50/50 collaborations._x000D_
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The prospective trajectories assembled in the publication appeal to art’s critical potential to institute the contemporary it envisions from within such an imagined cartography, and live as if it were possible to become the former west.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -