From: Gabriele Genge, Ludger Schwarte, Angela Stercken (eds.) Aesthetic Temporalities Today Present, Presentness, Re-Presentation September 2020, 278 p., pb., 33 B&W-ill., 44 col.-ill. 40,00 € (DE), 978-3-8376-5462-2 E-Book: PDF: 39,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-5462-6 This volume is dedicated to the interrelation between temporality and representation. It presumes that time cannot be conceived of as an abstract chronometric order, but that it is referring to materiality, being measured, represented, expressed, recognized, experienced and evaluated, and therefore is always closely related to cultural contexts of perception and evaluation. The contributions from various disciplines are dedicated to the present and its plural condi- tions and meanings. They provide insights into the state of research with special emphasis on the global present as well as on art and aesthetics from the 18th century until today. The anthology includes contributions by Mieke Bal, Stefan Binder, Maximilian Bergengruen, Iris Därmann, Gabriele Genge, Boris Roman Gibhardt, Boris Groys, Maria Muhle, Johannes F. Lehmann, Nkiru Nzegwu, Francesca Raimondi, Christine Ross, Ludger Schwarte, Angela Stercken, Samuel Strehle, Timm Trausch, Patrick Stoffel, and Christina Wessely. Gabriele Genge is a professor for Modern and Contemporary art history and art theory at the University Duisburg-Essen. Her recent research covers particularly transcultural and post- colonial areas of the discipline with a specific focus on French Colonialism and African and African-American image theory, knowledge systems and epistemology as well as migratory issues in Art History. She supervised the DFG research project »The Anachronic and the Present: Aesthetic Perception and Artistic Concepts of Temporality in the Black Atlantic.« Ludger Schwarte is a professor of philosophy at the Kunstakademie Duesseldorf. After posi- tions as assistant professor of image theory at the University of Basel and as a professor of aesthetics at the Zurich University of Arts, visiting scholarships led him to University Paris 8, GACVS (Washington), Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (Paris), University of Abidjan, Columbia University (New York), the EHESS (Paris) and to the IKKM (Weimar). His areas of research lie in aesthetics, political philosophy, philosophy of culture, ontology, and the history of science. Angela Stercken (PhD) is a senior researcher in the DFG project »The Anachronic and the Present: Aesthetic Perception and Artistic Concepts of Temporality in the Black Atlantic« at the University of Duisburg-Essen and member of the DFG-Network »Entangled Histories of Art and Migration: Forms, Visibilities, Agents.« Her research fields lie particularly in the theory of image in modern and contemporary art, in space, technology and timekeeping since the 18th century, in phenomena of temporality in art as well as migratory transcultural and transmedia processes especially in maritime spaces such as the transatlantic. For further information: www.transcript-verlag.de/en/978-3-8376-5462-2 © 2020 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Content Preface | 9 Aesthetic Temporalities Today: Present, Presentness, Re-Presentation | 11 Gabriele Genge, Ludger Schwarte, Angela Stercken 1_ The Global Spaces of the Present The Global Promise of Contemporary Art | 17 Gabriele Genge Present, Presence, Presentation | 31 Boris Groys Visible/Unvisible Present | 39 Johannes F. Lehmann Exhibiting Earth History. The Politics of Visualization in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century | 57 Patrick Stoffel, Christina Wessely Painting, Photography, Polychronicity: Lang Jingshan’s Portrait of Zhang Shanzi | 67 Tim Trausch Temporality, Oríkì and Nigeria’s Contemporary Art | 87 Nkiru Nzegwu The Presentness of a Minority. Notes on the Indian Twelver Shia | 101 Stefan Binder 2_ The Present in Art. Perspectives from Art History Time and Form: The “Unthought Known” | 113 Mieke Bal Rhythmical Presentness. On the ‘Rhythmology’ of Perception. Maldiney—Cézanne—Rilke | 129 Boris Roman Gibhardt Temporal Concepts of the Present and their Aesthetic Negotiation in Black Arts Movement and ‘Black Atlantic’ | 143 Angela Stercken The Aesthetics of Coexistence as Ongoing | 169 Christine Ross “There is first of all the doubtful contemporaneity of the present to itself.” The Spectral Present of Control and the Strategies of Performance | 183 Francesca Raimondi 3_ The Presentation of Presentness and Presence Presentations as Aesthetic Temporalities | 197 Ludger Schwarte Extreme Situations of the Political. Hannah Arendt’s Article “The Concentration Camps” (1948) | 207 Iris Därmann “Fortrollende Gegenwart:” Psychopathology and Epical Present Tense in Georg Heym’s Der Irre and Der Dieb | 219 Maximilian Bergengruen Now-time Explosion. The Experience of Time in Social Revolution | 239 Samuel Strehle Histories of the Present—a Media Philosophical Approach | 249 Maria Muhle Biographical Notes | 267 Aesthetic Temporalities Today 11 Gabriele Genge | Ludger Schwarte | Angela Stercken Aesthetic Temporalities Today: Present, Presentness, Re-Presentation1 The present seems familiar to us, hardly worth mentioning. But, has it always been like this? And what does the present really signify, if we consider that its idea and meaning have shifted considerably since its emergence in the 17th and 18th centu- ries? In recent years, the historicization of the concept of a present has gained momentum2 and its “birth” at the dawn of modernity increasingly been examined.3 A marked theorization of the present has also only recently been undertaken. As important as the orientation on the present has become for politics and business, for science and design, and many other social and cultural areas since then, it is no longer available seamlessly or unrestrictedly. This is also particularly noticeable in art. If since the 1960s the term ‘con- temporary art’ has proven to be a suitable vehicle to supplant the ideology of modernism and its associated idea of progress,4 this domination of the present is now itself coming under increasing scrutiny: the suggestion is that an ‘eternal 1| We would like to warmly thank Michael Bies and Michael Gamper for jointly preparing the conference exposé, which serves as the basis for this introduction. 2| Cf. Maria Muhle, “History will repeat itself. Für eine (Medien-) Philosophie des Reenactment, in Kör- per des Denkens. Neue Positionen der Medienphilosophie, ed. Lorenz Engell, Frank Hartmann, Christine Voss (Munich / Paderborn: Fink, 2013), 113-134; Doris Gerber, Analytische Metaphysik der Geschichte. Handlungen, Geschichte und ihre Erklärung (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2012). 3| Cf. Achim Landwehr, Geburt der Gegenwart. Eine Geschichte der Zeit im 17. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt o.M.: Fischer, 2014). 4| Christine Ross, The Past is the Present; It’s the Future Too. The Temporal Turn in Contemporary Art (New York /London: Continuum, 2012); Juliane Rebentisch, Theorien der Gegenwartskunst zur Einführung 12 Gabriele Genge | Ludger Schwarte | Angela Stercken present,’ instituted by technical dispositifs, has now ousted the preserving of the present from the false promises of the future.5 Considering the media, techno- logical, economic, and not least the political upheavals, more and more voices are proclaiming the ‘end of the present’ as a time we are familiar with and which can be interpreted and stabilized with the help of traditional semantics,6 while, in reference to art, the end of ‘contemporary art’ and a reorientation towards a ‘future art’ is demanded.7 Closely connected to the notion of the present are concepts like presentness [Gegenwärtigkeit] and re-presentation [Vergegenwärtigung], both of which point to how the present is always also a phenomenon of perception and conscious- ness, one that implies a promise of contemporariness,8 i.e. a “shared time.” The fulfilment of this promise is yet to be achieved, although the globalization of the economy and the media seems to have long brought it about.9 Asking what it ac- tually means to be ‘contemporary,’ how the present and presentness are even pos- sible, and how and through which media, techniques, and processes they can be produced—these issues are virulent right now. Right now? These perceptions of a globalized present provoke far more fun- damental questions as to the functions ascribed to re-presentation in transcultural fields of reference. In recent disputes about the present, it has become clear that it can hardly be conceived of as a universal present because this would have to be coupled to a geopolitical opening, the establishing of contact, and the perception of relational authority.10 If the present in this sense is understood as at once a glo- (Hamburg: Junius, 2013). Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All. Philosophy of Contemporary Art (London: Verso, 2013). 5| Cf. Geoffrey C. Bowker, “All Together Now. Synchronization, Speed, and the Failure of Narrativity,” Histo- ry and Theory 53 (2014): 564-576; or also Marcus Quent, ed., Absolute Gegenwart (Berlin: Merve, 2016); Boris Groys, On the New, trans. G. M. Goshgarian (London/ New York: Verso, 2014), 38-41. 6| Cf. Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, Anmerkungen zur Metamoderne (Hamburg: Textem, 2015); Armen Avanessian and Suhail Maik, ed., Der Zeitkomplex. Postcontemporary, trans. Ronald Voullié (Berlin: Merve, 2016). 7| Cf. Ludger Schwarte, Notate für eine künftige Kunst (Berlin: Merve 2016). 8| Cf. particularly Giorgio Agamben, “What is the Contemporary,” in What is an Apparatus? And other Essays, ed. id. (Stanford: Stanford University