Alexander García Düttmann Book order

"What is Contemporary Art?" by Alexander Garcia Düttmann explores the interplay between art and politics in today's context. The essay critiques how contemporary art often conforms to neoliberal ideologies, undermining its radical potential and hindering genuine social change, while engaging with key political-aesthetic discussions.

The featured activities contain various exercises using examples of sociology of health and medicine, including social factors shaping health, social relations between doctors and patients, and the health care system, among others.

Something needs to be changed—be it through the revolutionary overthrow of social conditions, the liberating force of passion, the contemplation and creation of works of art, or the exploration of an unresolved past. Luchino Visconti's films are models for the failure of such attempts. They show that this failure arises whenever people cling to possibilities that stand opposed to the reality of their lives. Does Adorno not write: "The place of utopia is blocked off by possibility, never by immediate reality"? Visconti: Insights into Flesh and Blood draws on aesthetics, film theory, and practical philosophy to propose an original interpretation of the melodramas of a great European director. In the encounter with Visconti's art, we come to see that something has changed already.

'Thought always exaggerates' Hannah Arendt writes. The question of exaggeration becomes a philosophical question when thought endeavours to clarify the ways in which it relates to limits. If its disclosing force depends on exaggeration, so does the confusion to which it can fall prey. This book analyses concepts such as truth and trust, practices such as politics and art, experiences such as the formation of a life line and its erasure, from the viewpoint of exaggeration.