Viewing Velocities explores a contemporary art scene caught in the gears of 24/7 capitalism. It looks at artists who embrace the high-octane experience economy through DIY performance pieces and exhibition-spanning installations, and others who are closer to the slow movement. Marcus Verhagen builds on the writing of theorists Jonathan Crary, Hartmut Rosa and Jacques Ranciere to trace lines of insurgent art that cast struggles over history, memory and labour-time in novel and revealing lights.
Some of the most compelling contemporary art plays on distinct, often contradictory conceptions of time. From Danh Vo's relics to Moyra Davey's photographs of dust-laden belongings, from shows about waiting and interrupted sleep to Maria Eichhorn's art strike and Ruth Ewan's gigantic reconstruction of the French revolutionary calendar, what makes a good artistic countermotion to our market-driven, tech-supported culture of speed?
"Compelling and groundbreaking. These analyses point toward imaginative possibilities beyond the dispiriting neoliberal imperatives now increasingly imposed on us."
Jonathan Crary, author of Scorched Earth
"A fine reading of contemporary art's engagements with social acceleration and the regulation of time."
Julian Stallabrass, author of Killing for Show
"Offers a lucid and capacious analysis of how contemporary art has, over the last three decades or so, addressed our society's troubled experience with the speed and pace of life under capitalism"
