If each era posits its own view of reality, what is ours? The common distinction between the virtual and the physical has become ever more elusive, and our perception of what is real ever more fluid.
This book is published to accompany the 20th Biennale of Sydney, directed by Dr Stephanie Rosenthal, which takes these key themes as its starting point. Staged at seven main venues, the exhibition is organised into ‘embassies of thought’, each of which are reflected in this beautifully-produced volume. The book focuses on these Embassies and other ‘in-between spaces’, investigating our interaction with the digital world, the blurred boundaries between art forms and the interconnection between politics and financial power structures.
The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed features new essays by André Lepecki, Franco Berardi, Marcus Steinweg, Hicham Khalidi, Aveek Sen and Markus Miessen, new text and visual commissions by a range of artists including Ming Wong, Dayanita Singh, Keg de Souza, Cécile B Evans, Christian Bo Larrson, Richard Bell, Heman Chong, Dane Mitchell, and Adam Linder, and a series of fascinating roundtable discussions with participating artists. This book also features a compendium of excerpts from key thinkers’ texts that have informed the 20th Biennale, including; Rosemary Arroj, Alain Badiou, Stephanie Bailey, Walter Benjamin, Edouard Glissant, Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, Rebecca Schneider, Hito Steyerl, Michael Taussig, Jenna Wortham and Slavoj Žižek.
