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THE POST- CONTEMPORARY A Speculative Debate

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Sebastian Olma

THE POST-
CONTEMPORARY
A Speculative Debate

LOOP, INTERRUPTED fusion of marketing and platform technology is

Over the past decades, the term ‘post-con- streamlining and automating psychic processes
temporary’ has popped up occasionally here in such a way as to prevent the emergence of
and there in the art world, but it hasn’t quite emancipative forms of collective consciousness.
taken on.1 This is probably not that surprising, The result is a process of severe consciousness
given the questionable achievements of the deflation supported by an increasingly general-
notion of postmodernism. There is an under- ized state of aesthetic poverty. In this situation
standable lack of enthusiasm for denomina- the contemporary turns into a penal complex
tions and labels that come with the prefix for cultural and political imagination where
‘post-’, particularly if they are meant to her- temporality turns on itself in a perpetual loop.
ald a new era or movement or something to
that effect. Hence, it needs to be stated from This issue of Making & Breaking has the am-
the outset that this new edition of Making bition of punctuating the penal walls of the
& Breaking by no means proposes the term imagination by inviting theorists and practi-
‘post-contemporary’ as a theoretical label for tioners to speculate on the post-contemporary.
a new, perhaps even revolutionary (what would We have asked potential contributors to share
that even mean today?) turn in art and culture. their visions of the post-contemporary. How do
Instead, it represents an attempt to use the we escape the hamster wheel of the contempo-
notion of the post-contemporary as a specula- rary? Where are the traces of a desirable future
tive future horizon for a critical debate on the found in the present? How can they be activat-
social conditions in which art and aesthetic ed toward a post-contemporary practice that
practice are presently taking place. Our theo- points beyond the aesthetic poverty of the here
retical point of departure can perhaps be best and now?
communicated by sharing the statement that
was sent out to potential contributors about a In retrospect, it could seem almost comical to
year ago: have bemoaned a perpetually looping pres-
ent just weeks before the Covid-19 pandemic
We live in a time when it seems easier to imag- spread globally. Yet it would be absolutely fa-
ine the end of the world than the end of neolib- tal to misunderstand the cascade of hard and
eral capitalism. Mark Fisher famously marked soft lockdowns that brought many aspects of
this historical moment in terms of ‘capitalist social life to a standstill as a reminder of how
realism’, i.e., a state in which the thought of a smoothly time (and social life) was flowing in
future that is qualitatively different from the pre-Covid-19 times. Rather, the pandemic has
present becomes near impossible. The fatal worked as a magnifying glass on the rampant

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THE POST-CONTEMPORARY

injustices caused by decades of neoliberal pol- POST-CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE

itics. Inequities in access to medical care, in- AGAINST THE ‘NEW NORMAL’
humane working conditions in industries such In this sense, this issue of Making & Breaking
as meat processing, and the devastating dem- should be seen as an invitation to speculate
agogy of social-media-based business models on forms of art and aesthetic practice that can
(the likes of the German Querdenken and the help turn the post-pandemic reality into one
Dutch Viruswaarheid), are just a few examples that breaks with the foundations of the con-
of the painful contemporary realities revealed temporary (in the sense outlined in the invi-
by the pandemic across the entire spectrum of tational statement) – and could in this sense
society. Simultaneously, however, Covid-19 also become truly post-contemporary. While writing
demonstrates that the contemporary loop of this introduction, another earth-shaking event
numerical acceleration can indeed be interrupt- has taken place, this time in the sphere of
ed, and the economic imperative can be tem- politics. The failed coup d’état in Washington,
pered by politics. Our societies are becoming D.C. exposed the political abyss that opens
economically significantly less active because up underneath the surface of a contemporary
concern for the well-being of the population that is marked by decades of wilful neglect of
makes this necessary. We are no longer storm- society’s democratic cohesion. Tyranny and fas-
ing obsessively into the void. Of course, we cism are raising their ugly heads again because
have to accept that this potentially meaningful neoliberalism has been rather successful in
rupture is an exceptional situation, after which turning societies globally into aggregations of
everything could well go back to business as monocultural networks that have a hard time
usual. However, Alexander Kluge and Ferdinand recognizing value in anything that is not sub-
von Schirach remind us that states of emergen- missible to market validation. Instead of the
cy resulting from natural disasters are capable liberating social networks that the optimistic
of leaving their mark on the future trajectory nineties promised, we are now moving toward
of a society.2 The huge earthquake in Lisbon in antisocial network societies that are compre-
1755, for example, shook the ideological and re- hensively unsustainable as they tend to deplete
ligious foundations of the Middle Ages so badly the very resources they are built on, be they
that it provided an important impulse for the natural, social or psychological.
Enlightenment. As is well known, Voltaire finally
lost his confidence in ‘divine benevolence’ after The purpose of the struggle ahead is to reverse
the quake, and many of his contemporaries also this process of resource depletion. We need to
had to admit: ‘God is no longer suitable as a commit our societies to a collective effort of
foundation’.3 radical construction. It should be clear that this
is going to be a multi-dimensional effort and
thus a struggle to be fought on several fronts
at once. Naomi Klein deserves credit for having
popularised this notion in her writing. As she
puts it in her 2019 book On Fire:

‘We will need to rebuild the public sphere,

reverse privatizations, relocalize large parts of
economies, scale back overconsumption, bring
back long-term planning, heavily regulate and
tax corporations, maybe even nationalize some
of them, cut military spending, and recognize
our debts to the Global South’.4

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What we have to resist – post-pandemic, from our perspective, the project of sensing a
post-white-supremacist-insurrection – is what post-contemporary future must begin by re-
is already being called ‘the new normal’, that thinking and reconstructing the current state of
is, a return to an intensified version of social aesthetic practice and cultural production.
and planetary exploitation. Instead, we need
to collectively construct a path out of the THE CONTRIBUTIONS
misery of the contemporary, while also tak- In the opening essay of this issue, ‘The Great
ing into account the important learnings from Deflation: Arts and Culture after the Creative
the pandemic. Artists, designers and creatives Industries’, Justin O’Connor starts this process
in general have an important role to play in of rethinking from the point of view of cultural
such a project. Where, if not in the aesthetic policy. He argues in favour of a post-contem-
fields, are we to find the resources we need porary cultural policy that tries to reimagine
to produce shared symbols for emancipative the fields of aesthetic production beyond a
social cohesion? Such shared symbols must be largely failed creative industries approach.
extended to the planetary solidarity humanity Retracing the rise of what he calls ‘the cre-
needs to achieve in order to address today’s ative industries imaginary’ since its inception
existential challenges. However, as Bernard in the 1990s, he diagnoses a decoupling of
Stiegler pointed out nearly two decades ago, the initially ambitiously progressive idea of
in order to contribute effectively to the search the creative industries from a reality that has
for a path into the post-contemporary, those become fully complicit with the brutal oper-
working in the aesthetic fields have to over- ations of extractive capitalism. Rather than
come their own complicity in the ‘symbolic continuing to openly lie to ourselves about the
misery’ of our time. For Stiegler, this means transformative powers of the sector in its cur-
that they have to rediscover the fundamental rent form, he argues in favour of a new imagi-
connection between aesthetics and politics.5 nary for cultural policy that re-aligns arts and
In the sphere of contemporary art, Hito Steyerl culture with public services, recognises arts
has recently updated Stiegler’s demand by and culture as a foundational element of the
making it absolutely clear that the question economy as well as a public good, and prac-
of how to build a sustainable art world can tices creative justice in terms of pay as well as
only be posed as a political challenge.6 Hence, social diversity.

Marina Vishmidt’s ‘Post-Reality Markets and

Structured Financial Time Products’ also
addresses the debilitating confines of cur-
rent aesthetic production, this time from
the more abstract theoretical perspectives
of philosophy and economics. The provoca-
tive argument she develops is that there is a
strange equivalence between the financial and
creative industries in so far as they serve as
ideal playgrounds of contemporary capital-
ist ideology. The pandemic has revealed the
extent to which financial markets now operate
independently from the real economy (produc-
tion, purchase and flow of goods and services).
They have achieved a breath-taking degree
of autonomy, thanks, not least, to ceaseless
investment (corporate welfare), through which
states willingly uphold the fiction of financial

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productivity. In the creative industries, Reality’ explores the historical relationship

Vishmidt sees ideological fiction as well, in a between globalisation, postmodernism and
sense not dissimilar to O’Connor’s ‘creative the alt-right. Didn’t postmodernism, she asks,
industries imaginary’ that has lost touch with introduce the relativism and scepticism about
an increasingly sordid reality. However, while the existence of objective reality that has
financial capital is insulated from the crises of become the cornerstone of the current suc-
economy and society, creative ‘human capi- cess of the ideologies of the alt-right? And by
tal’ is not. What those working in the creative extension, doesn’t the art world bear a certain
industries can take away from Vishmidt’s responsibility for having so eagerly and uncriti-
argument is that creative vanguardism toward cally embraced postmodern theory? These are
a post-contemporary future has to start with fascinating questions because their discussion
the rejection of both fictions: the fiction of reveals that the attempt to take refuge in the
neoliberal finance and of neoliberal creativity. seemingly political neutrality of (in this case)
postmodernism has had catastrophic political
In his ‘Notes on the Platform Condition’, consequences. Following Dimitrakaki’s argu-
Internet critic Geert Lovink zooms in on a spe- ment, one could almost quip that much of
cific aspect of contemporary creative fiction. contemporary art has been a super-spreader
For him, the platform model represents not for the alt-right’s attack on our sense of a col-
just a business model or a market place but lectively shared reality. A post-contemporary
a Kulturideal: a cultural ideal within the con- artistic practice will have to learn from this
temporary where neoliberal an-aesthesia does historical failure, and do so fast.
its best to choke the life out of any aesthetic
aspiration (Lovink refers to Rao’s notion of In her contribution to Making & Breaking,
the ‘premium mediocre’). At the same time, Patricia Reed also addresses the question of
platforms have begun to exert political and learning, taking a more general philosophical
even quasi-religious powers as they influence perspective. Reed’s essay ‘The End of a World
not just elections but also our very sense of and its Pedagogies’ is a meditation on what it
reality. The assault on the Capitol should be means to live in a world that is coming to an
seen as only the latest, if particularly despi- end. Her notion of ‘world’ seems to be located
cable, manifestation of a digitally enabled war somewhere half-way between the phenom-
against the very foundations of a collectively enologist life-world (the world of daily ex-
shared sense of reality. It should disqualify perience) and the objective world of science.
technological solutionism indefinitely and give ‘World’ is also understood as an historical
us the courage to begin the debate about re- formation and in this formal sense it is related
gaining democratic sovereignty over our means to Fernand Braudel’s notion of longue durée, or
of communication. Immanuel Wallerstein’s capitalist world sys-
tem.7 As such an historical formation, our
Angela Dimitrakaki’s point of departure is current ‘world’ is clearly coming to an end. The
the observation that a potential leap into a fascinating problem that Reed is raising is that
post-contemporary future will always have the futurity of a given world – the way it proj-
to be based on such a sense of collectively ects itself into the future – loses its validity
shared reality which is necessarily located in once this world ends. In other words, her argu-
the present (the con-temporary). Today, such ment goes to the heart of the key question of
a sense of shared reality is under attack from the post-contemporary: how can we think and
the alt-right, enabled by the aforementioned create a truly post-contemporary futurity, that
social media/platform technology. However, as is, one that is neither caught in the obsolete
an art historian, Dimitrakaki’s argument goes assumptions of the contemporary, nor in a
in a different direction. ‘From Postmodernism mystification of the future? Finding effective
to the Alt-right: Notes on the Loss of Objective responses to this challenge is necessarily a

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pedagogical task, involving, on the one hand, ‘nomadism’. Originating in Gilles Deleuze and
honesty about the unsustainability of current Félix Guattari’s work as an attempt to proj-
structures and systems of reference and, on ect the possibility of a revolutionary, radically
the other hand, the will to take the risk to ex- open form of subjectivity, the notion of no-
perimentally explore untraveled paths. madism has been perverted by the art world
into a justification for a hyper-individualist
Suhail Malik’s essay ‘Risk Exposure — Surfeit lifestyle whose faux cosmopolitanism con-
Futurity’ challenges the idea that the present sists of not much more than Western mid-
can be characterised by a lack of futurity, by dle-class privilege and mobile consumption
a cancellation of the future, or, as we put it patterns based on cheap jet fuel. Covid-19 has
in our invitational statement, as a situation in brought this mockery of nomadism to a provi-
which ‘temporality turns on itself in a perpetu- sional end. Localism, meant here in the sense
al loop.’ In a critique that partly resonates with of radical environmental politics, can be an
Reed’s point about the end of a world neces- interesting antidote, going forward, but only if
sarily coinciding with the exhaustion of that it integrates the openness that was inherent to
world’s futurity, he argues that the assumed the revolutionary notion of nomadism. Instead
cancellation of the future is an illusion based of trying to retrieve ‘our shabby, semi-ruined,
on the illegitimate extension of a modern, colonised-by-capital cultural environment
linear understanding of temporality. Instead of and its unjust histories’, Vilensky writes, we
a lack of futurity, he sees the present marked should mobilise ‘all possibilities for the de-
by an abundance of it, a surfeit futurity that fence of another world which is hidden in plain
seems to overwhelm our collective semantic sight’. In doing so, he provides a signpost for
ability to narrate effective future imaginaries. an artistic practice looking for a path into the
Rather than insisting on an obsolete modern- post-contemporary.
ist understanding of temporality (that was
Western-centric to begin with), Malik invites us
to engage with the idea of a speculative time
complex where ‘calculations and actions in the
present are initiated on the basis of implaca-
bly incomplete knowledge’ about the future.
Whilst the full ramifications of such a concep-
tual reorientation remain to be worked out,
Malik’s foregrounding of the future’s ‘aseman-
tic contingency’ implies a call for an intense
awareness of the material conditions of the
Exposing the faux cosmopolitanism of the art world?:
contemporary and, following from that, pru- Christopher Kulendran Thomas’s New Eelam (2016)
dence and care with regard to a politics that
aspires to truly post-contemporary futures. Brian Holmes’ appeal to ‘Map the Power’ rep-
resents one possible and potentially power-
Both of those qualities are on ample display ful response to Vilensky’s critique. His essay
in Dmitry Vilensky’s ‘From Nomads to Roots, issues an invitation to join a project of building
and Back’, which transitions this edition of a collaborative information and communica-
Making & Breaking from theoretical-scholarly tion infrastructure that can help to confront
analyses to practice-orientated contributions. and manage from below the two major crises
A member of the Russian art collective Chto we are facing today: ecological collapse and
Delat, Vilensky urges the art world to use the economic depression. ‘To get to the light of
interruption caused by the pandemic as a day’, he writes, ‘the rising sun of social and
moment of critical self-reflection. The par- ecological recovery is going to need a serious
ticular target of his critique is the notion of push from the people at the bottom’. Achieving

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THE POST-CONTEMPORARY

what in North America is today often called argument for the project of a post-contem-
a ‘Just Transition’, collaborative artistic prac- porary future is that it will require long-term
tices have a crucial contribution to make in commitment. Functioning as a magnifying
generating the knowledge for and vision of a glass on the brutal inequities and anti-demo-
more equitable economic system. The point cratic effects of our current economic system,
here is not to argue that everyone should join the present pandemic rupture should give us
the just cause of breaking the global fossil the momentum, sincerity and perseverance
fuel infrastructure, but that artistic practice for the struggle and the joy of radical recon-
can and should be mobilized in the name of a struction that lies ahead. For those working
post-contemporary future that is liveable and within the aesthetic fields of cultural produc-
even desirable for the many, not the few. What tion, the project of sensing a post-contempo-
is at stake in this project is the generation of rary could provide a thrilling alternative to the
democratic power for civilisational change. default complicity demanded by the neoliberal
creative industries. How do we get from the
In the final essay of this edition, Aiwen Yin contemporary to the post-contemporary? To
returns to one of the great current obsta- quote Vilensky again, we get there by mobilis-
cles to such civilisational change: the prob- ing ‘all possibilities for the defence of another
lem of antisocial networks. Entitled ‘On world which is hidden in plain sight’.
Post-Temporariness’, the essay opens with a
meditation on the temporary and reductive
nature of social relations in neoliberal capi-
talism, which develops into a radical critique
of contemporary design. The charge Yin levels
against her own discipline is that it has been
complicit in a ‘mode of design [that] disas-
sembles human beings and their experiences
so that they can become disconnected mod-
ules’. There is a reductionism in the design of
our contemporary social networks that to her
mind has shown little evolution since Chaplin’s
satire on conveyor-belt production in Modern
Times. The essay focuses on the temporari-
ness of social relations as a dimension of this
reductionism. Meaning and resonance in social
relationships require time, which is something
that the quick fix of transactional exchange
excludes by definition. In other words, our REFERENCES
current (anti)social networks are in need of a
thorough redesign that encourages sustain- 1. For one of the first mentions of the term,
able, long-term relationships. In order to be see Gillick, Liam (2010) ‘Contemporary
Art Does Not Account for that which is
able to take up such a task, the practice of
Taking Place’, e-flux, #21, December, re-
design needs to renounce its current complic- trieved from: https://www.e-flux.com/
ity in a system ‘that isolates individuals for journal/21/67664/contemporary-art-does-
the sake of endless capitalist growth, towards not-account-for-that-which-is-taking-
one that focuses on relationships and human place/. See also the overview in Smith,
growth, in the form of individual and collective Terry (2019) Art to Come: Histories of
Contemporary Art, Durham: Duke University
development’.
Press, pp. 279 – 310.
2. Although current research very much
One of the conclusions we can draw from Yin’s points to the human-made character of

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the pandemic.
3. Von Schirach, Ferdinand and Kluge,
Alexander (2020) Trotzdem, Munich:
Luchterhand, pp. 50 and ff.
4. Klein, Naomi (2019) On Fire: The Burning
Case for a Green New Deal, New York: Allan
Lane.
5. Stiegler, Bernard (2014) Symbolic Misery,
Vol. 1: The Hyperindustrial Epoch, London:
Polity.
6. Steyerl, Hito (2019) ‘How to Build a
Sustainable Art World. In Conversation
with Despina Zefkili,’ Ocula Magazine,
London, 18 October, retrieved from: https://
ocula.com/magazine/conversations/
hito-steyerl/.
7. It might be interesting to note that
Wallerstein predicted the end of the capi-
talist world system around 2025-2050.

SEBASTIAN OLMA
Sebastian Olma holds the research chair
for Cultural and Creative Industries at the
Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design
and Technology (Caradt) at Avans University
of Applied Sciences. Alongside his academic
work, he has advised policymakers throughout
Europe on the facts and fictions of the cre-
ative economy. He is a cofounder and editor of
Amsterdam Alternative and serves as chairper-
son at the subculture centre OT301. His recent
publications include Art and Autonomy: Past,
Present, Future (2018, V2_ Publishing) and In
Defence of Serendipity: For a Radical Politics of
Innovation (2016, Repeater Press).

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