This timely volume discusses the experimental documentary projects of
some of the most significant artists working in the world today: Hito
Steyerl, Joachim Koester, Tacita Dean, Matthew Buckingham, Zoe Leonard,
Jean-Luc Moulène, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Jon Thomson and Alison
Craighead, and Anri Sala. Their films, videos, and photographic series
address failed utopian experiments and counter-hegemonic social
practices.
This study illustrates the political significance of these artistic
practices and critically contributes to the debate on the conditions of
utopian thinking in late-capitalist society, arguing that contemporary
artists' interest in the past is the result of a shift within the
temporal organization of the utopian imagination from its futuristic
pole toward remembrance. The book therefore provides one of the first
critical examinations of the recent turn toward documentary in the field
of contemporary art.