Art Unlimited?

The editor and authors present Grenzenlos Kunst?, a collection of essays published by the Akademie der Künste together with the Verlag Kettler. In a discussion led by Patrick Bahners (FAZ), Robert Kudielka, Angela Lammert, Hans Belting, Johannes Odenthal and Philip Ursprung consider the diverse aspects of a subject which, through the ‘Global Museum’ project, has acquired an urgent topicality in Berlin particularly. The questions under debate include the global transference of the western European concept of art, the pioneering role of the international art market, the current critique of the ‘contemporary’, and the relationship between the document, intrinsic artistic value and historical ‘re-enactment’. During the book release, rarely shown film material is also being screened.

In the essays in this volume, Kader Attia, Thomas Burkhalter, Thierry de Duve, Peter Galison, Helmut Lachenmann, Jean-Luc Nancy, Luis Camillo Osorio, Tobias Wendl and others not only address the transcendence of the accepted borders of art, but also explore how the European notion of art has been shattered by the global expansion of contemporary art practices, both in terms of artistic diversity as well as from the perspective of culturally divergent standpoints. The issues raised are supplemented by contributions from Jacques Rancière, Nicolas Bourriaud and Antje Stahl on the art controversy in France.