The Changing Constitution of the Present

How our experience of presence, time, and history is articulated in contemporary artistic practices.

Our present is defined by contemporaneity: the interconnection of heterogeneous times, histories, and temporalities. These many and various times do not merely exist in parallel with one another, simultaneously. Rather, they interconnect and are brought to bear on the same present, forming a sort of planetary present, and—at least in principle—a global sharing of time, although one not shared equally. In The Changing Constitution of the Present: Essays on the Work of Art in Times of Contemporaneity, Jacob Lund explores how the conditions for politically engaged art and aesthetic practice, for questioning the present, have changed in recent decades, while considering how our historical present and its temporal quality differ significantly from previous presents.