Contemporary art

This book offers an original and thought-provoking exploration of a diverse range of contemporary artistic practices, set within a broader cultural context. It argues that art can teach us about the human condition and our way of co-inhabiting the world, in a unique interplay between reason and imagination, creation and contemplation, poetry and inquiry.

Russell Haswell and Florian Hecker pursue their exploration of the computer music system invented by Xenakis.

The third thematic volume on the "Aquapelagos" series, a collection of split LPs where selected artists offer their own take into water surrounded cultures and communities.

Writer Nicolas Tardy is an author associated with the 2022 exhibition season of La Kunsthalle Mulhouse. He immersed himself in the universe of three exhibitions, composed freely around the works and ideas he perceived there.

Writer Véronique Vassiliou is an author associated with the 2023 exhibition season of La Kunsthalle Mulhouse. She immersed herself in the universe of three exhibitions, composed freely around the works and ideas she perceived there.

Kim Hastreiter, co-founder of the beloved Paper magazine, has spent the last 50 years amassing a vast and iconoclastic collection of stuff. This volume, aptly titled STUFF, chronicles an extraordinary slice of history and the people who defined it, using Hastreiter's singular edit of art, fashion, design, photography, books and ephemera as a lens.

The story of La Salle de Bains art center in Lyon since 2013.

Bundle.

The first album to come out of the collaboration between Jason Kahn (electronics) and Magda Mayas (piano and objects), who have been playing together regularly in concert since 2012.

Writing as a shifting space in which to embody the singular relationship that artists—and art critics—can have with words, texts and language.

The re-release of the much-sought-after art book by Coil's John Balance—the first ever extensive overview of his drawings, paintings and sketches—in a reformatted and largely redesigned edition.

This issue of the journal of the inter-schools of art, design and architecture research network Réseau Peinture explores the genre of portraiture.

Recorded in 2019 at the Centre Pompidou, Music for Today is the last public performance by Canadian artist Michael Snow, who died in 2023. Entirely improvised on a prepared piano, this musical piece is a true journey through the musical work of an artist who made perpetual experimentation an artistic practice in its own right.

The first-ever release on vinyl of the important 2001 lowercase work "Forms of Paper" by Steve Roden. Lovingly remastered by Taylor Deupree of 12K Masters in 2024 from the original recording, this limited-edition LP features Steve Roden's artwork on the cover/packaging.

Michel Guet's intellectual diary, from his commitment to "Banalytique" (an experimental movement that emerged from French post-situationnism in the early 1980s in response to the triumph of the "colonization of reality by market value" and the injunctions to make work totally profitable) to the social critique of art and the vertigo of a planet on fire.

At the crossroads of design, art, architecture and popular culture, Alexandra Midal investigates the techniques developed by artists, designers and revolutionaries to conceal information and messages, through the lens of the coded language of flowers.

Denzil Forrester, Sophie Calle, "The Imaginary Institution of India", PST ART, Bill Viola...

A collection exploring the intersections of gender and religion in post-secular knowledge production and visual culture.

A critical exploration of the values and qualities inherent in independent educational organizations and the hurdles in the way of remaining "alternative" with the passing of time.

Two lectures from art historian and curator Griselda Pollock address feminist questions and art education in the 1980s and today.

A book-length poem by Berlin based artist and poet Natalie Häusler.

Joint artistic research, between Switzerland and Brazil, around ideas of consumption and exhaustion, the legacies of colonialist expropriation and its monocultural ideologies, besides the infrastructures of export and displacement, across both countries and their intertwined historie.

Without ever giving a lesson in painting, Alain Gunst lists 32 reasons for painting that, “bad” or “not so bad”, take malicious pleasure in mocking an art world.

A look back at the poetic, political and anthropological dimensions of the collective performance initiated by artist Giorgio Andreotta Calò around a mining plant in Sardinia.

An education turned around by art: famous English anthropologist Tim Ingold invites us to consider the arts as the very basis of an education in the 21st-century, an education that might begin to address the profound social and ecological crises we face.

A look back at all Nicolas Trembley's exhibitions over the past 10 years, the cross-fertilization of art and craft, and the various references he has used, both Western and Eastern.

Documentation on sculptor Edoardo Tresoldi's permanent monumental installation in Venice's Procuratie Vecchie.

A collective story that recounts the history of the representation of natural landscapes and the imaginations that accompany them.

The 49th issue of the critical graphic design journal, about Lawrence Weiner and his relationship with typography.

An anthology of texts by Jean-Michel Bouhours on photographer and filmmaker Paolo Gioli, a key figure in the Italian avant-garde of the 1970s.

A booklet containing two musical pieces by artist Grégoire Motte and composer Gabriel Mattei.

Published in collaboration with Harun Farocki Institut, this book unpacks About Narration [Erzählen], a 1975 essay film directed by Ingemo Engström and Harun Farocki.

John Armleder delivers a series of drawings for his “autobiography”.

The new special Toilet Paper edition, in collaboration with British artist-photographer Miles Aldridge.

Short Circuits features essays, interviews, and documentation that highlight Dubai based artist Vikram Divecha's interest in the often invisible structures of planning, construction, demolition and maintenance. It centres on his long-term collaborations with workers, contractors and decision-makers who shape the cities of the United Arab Emirates and beyond.

Rirkrit Tiravanija's methods for making less.

Amazoom by Luca Trevisani presents two hypotheses of landscape reincarnation, two translations, two strict, entropic protocols of imagination.

Three perspectives (philosophical, sociological and artist's word) on the meaning of the avant-garde, and its relationship to the counter-culture.

The new and definitive edition of Vilém Flusser's fabulous treatise, based on the original French typescripts.

Artist Dan Graham and writer Jessica Russell's playful Architecture / Astrologie considers some of the most important and innovative figures in the world of architecture from an angle few would expect: their star signs.

An archaeology of the imagination / a new aesthetic of ruin (a sophisticated artist's edition in a box, inspired by the over-exploitation of Carrara marble quarries).

Rooted in Danish folk heritage yet shaped by contemporary experimental sound practices, the second album of Marie Kølbæk Iversen's musical and artistic project, blends spectral vocals, atmospheric instrumentation, and oral tradition into an immersive listening experience.

The second issue of the biannual magazine that extends and broadens the questions raised by the thematic program of La Criée art center in Rennes, imagining forms of resistance and alternatives to the various crises—ecological, as well as post-colonial, political and social—that punctuate and shape our globalised societies.

64 contributions from an international selection of critics, artists, poets, architects, filmmakers, and theorists: the fourth issue of e-flux Index features everything published on e-flux.com from June–July 2024, (re)arranged into 9 thematic chapters—ranging from sections on DIY and amateurism, on verbal domination, on contemporary resistance and organising efforts, and on our doomscrolling fatigue with the networked world.

Assisted suicide activists; Lebanon under the bombs; activism at the museum; Laurène Marx; prison life at Les Baumettes in Marseille; in the poetry of Laura Vazquez...

The cross-generational literary journal Luvah continues its comeback with an eclectic mix of fashion-related offerings.