The ways we encounter contemporary art and performance is changing. Installations brim with
archival documents. Dances stretch for weeks. Performances last a minute. Exhibitions are
spread out over thirty venues. There are endless artworks about mid-century architecture and
design. How are we expected to engage with today' s diverse practise? Is the old model of
close-looking still the ideal or has it given way to browsing skimming and sampling? Across
four essays art historian and critic Claire Bishop identifies trends in contemporary practice
- research-based installations performance exhibitions interventions and invocations of
modernist architecture - and their challenges to traditional modes of attention. Charting a
critical path through the last three decades Bishop pinpoints how spectatorship and visual
literacy are evolving under the pressures of digital technology.
