It is a scary and disorienting time for art, as it is a scary and disorienting time in general. Aesthetic experience is both overshadowed by the spectacle of current events and pressed into new connection with them. The self-image of art as a social good is collapsing under the weight of capitalism’s dysfunction.

In these incisive essays, art critic Ben Davis makes sense of our extreme present as an emerging "after-culture"—a culture whose forms and functions are being radically reshaped by cataclysmic events. In the face of catastrophe, he holds out hope that reckoning with the new realities of art, technology, activism, and the media, can help us weather the super-storms of the future.

“This kaleidoscopic collection will help you see and comprehend the world anew—which is, in my book, what good art should do.”
—Astra Taylor

Author: Ben Davis
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Page Count: 180pp
Size: 5.5 x 8.5
Notes: paperback
Date of Publication: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-164259699