Art’s presence in the field of new media has never been more pronounced. Access to media images and Internet-based research are among the most significant factors affecting contemporary art production. The art market has changed as well, gaining influence in the field of contemporary art; even art institutions are taking a different approach today than they did twenty years ago.
The 60th Jahresring takes the form of a compilation of artist interviews and offers a snapshot of a highly active art scene that stretches from Berlin as a new international center for art. Nicolaus Schafhausen put a series of questions to thirty-one art practitioners, less geared toward each artist’s own praxis and more toward the conditions under which it arises.
The focus in these interviews is on the artists’ self-positioning in an era shaped by such far-reaching change in the market and the media. What emerges are temporally fixed positions within a practice that is associated more than ever before with precarious working conditions and the logistics of the market. This book offers insight into this “other” dimension of an artist’s existence and registers attention economy as a central component of contemporary art production.
Subsequent to the publication, Kunsthalle Wien will host a group exhibition related to questions about the value of attention and spectacle. The exhibition Attention Economy will take place from May 16 to June 9, 2014.
Attention Economy
Jahresring #60: Jahrbuch für moderne Kunst
Edited by Brigitte Oetker and Nicolaus Schafhausen
Interviews with Saâdane Afif, Thomas Bayrle, Michael Beutler, Monica Bonvicini, Mike Bouchet, Ulla von Brandenburg, Angela Bulloch, Andrea Büttner, Keren Cytter, Simon Denny, Thea Djordjadze, Ólafur Elíasson, Harun Farocki, Dani Gal, Katharina Grosse, Eberhard Havekost, Florian Hecker, Christian Jankowski, Susanne Kriemann, Antje Majewski, Olaf Metzel, Carsten Nicolai, Olaf Nicolai, Marcel Odenbach, Silke Otto-Knapp, Willem de Rooij, Cornelia Schleime, Michael Stevenson, Hito Steyerl, Haegue Yang, Tobias Zielony
October 2013, English/German
17 x 24 cm, 328 pages, softcover
ISBN 978-3-95679-024-9
For orders, please contact [email protected].
Sternberg Press
Caroline Schneider
Karl-Marx-Allee 78
D-10243 Berlin
www.sternberg-press.com