The Baader-Meinhof Complex

How technology and the politics of attention changed the way we look at art The ways we encounter contemporary art and performance has changed. How are we expectedto engage with today's diverse practice? Is the old model of close-looking still the ideal, or has itgiven way to browsing, skimming, and sampling? Across four provocative and insightful essays, art historian and critic Claire Bishop identifies trends in contemporary practice. Charting a critical path through the last three decades, Bishop pinpoints how spectatorship and visual literacy are evolving under the pressures of digital technology. She explores how researched-based exhibitions have proliferated turning the artist into an investigator or archivist with mixed results. Spatial performance can now involve the artist, dancers, or even the audience as participants, often framed with Instagram in mind. The political event is not longer activated without an understanding of the media that will record and distribute it. The proliferation of works that use modernist architecture is noticeable; but has this become a shorthand for something else? Disordered Attention is a vital survey of 21st century art, from one of the leading art thinkers ofour times. How technology and the attention economy has impacted contemporary art The ways we encounter contemporary art and performance is changing. Installations brim with archival documents. Dances stretch for weeks. Performances last a minute. Exhibitions are spread out over thirty venues. There are endless artworks about mid-century architecture and design. How are we expected to engage with today's diverse practise? Is the old model of close-looking still the ideal, or has it given way to browsing, skimming, and sampling? Across four essays, art historian and critic Claire Bishop identifies trends in contemporary practice, research-based installations, performance exhibitions, interventions, and invocations of modernist architecture, and their challenges to traditional modes of attention. Charting a critical path through the last three decades, Bishop pinpoints how spectatorship and visual literacy are evolving under the pressures of digital technology. Introduction : OSXXI, Disordering Attention I 1 Information Overload : Research-Based Art 37 2 Black Box, White Cube, Grey Zone Performance Exhibitions and Hybrid Spectatorship 77 3 Seizing the Moment : Interventions 113 4 Deja Vu : Modernist Architecture and Design 155 Epilogue 197 Acknowledgements 201 Notes 205 Illustration Credits 247 Index 253 Two recent performances seem emblematic of how we look at performance art today.