The contemporary is a phrase in frequent use in artworld discourse as a placeholder term for broader, world-picturing concepts such as the contemporary condition or contemporaneity. Brief references to key texts by philosophers such as Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Rancire, and Peter Osborne often tend to suffice as indicating the outer limits of theoretical discussion. In an attempt to add some depth to the discourse, this paper outlines my approach to these questions, then explores in some detail what these three theorists have had to say in recent years about contemporaneity in general and contemporary art in particular, and about the links between both. It also examines key essays by Jean-Luc Nancy, Nstor Garca Canclini, as well as the artist-theorist Jean-Phillipe Antoine, each of whom have contributed significantly to these debates. The analysis moves from Agambens poetic evocation of contemporariness as a Nietzschean experience of untimeliness in relation to ones times, through Nancys emphasis on arts constant recursion to its origins, Rancires attribution of dissensus to the current regime of art, Osbornes insistence on contemporary arts post-conceptual character, to Canclinis preference for a post-autonomous art, which captures the world at the point of its coming into being. I conclude by echoing Antoines call for artists and others to think historically, to knit together a specific variety of times, a task that is especially pressing when presentist immanence strives to encompasses everything.
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