The Centre for Research in Artistic Practice under Contemporary Conditions is based on the observation that recent decades have seen thoroughgoing changes within art that have made it difficult to recognize its works as works of art in modern terms. The emergence of contemporary art therefore necessitates a paradigm shift within the study of art, a paradigm shift in which the very notion of art and artistic practice is at stake.

The centre's research agenda is guided by the assumption that during the transition from modern to contemporary art, the relationship between artistic practice, sense-making, and the sociopolitical and ecosystemic reality in which art takes place and by which it is nourished, has undergone substantial changes. Contemporary works of art no longer participate in a single progressive form of history with each art historical period replacing, developing or challenging the previous period. The history of art as we knew it is no longer the horizon within which a large part of contemporary practices operates and makes sense. In order to catch up with contemporary art, the study of art therefore needs to revise traditional notions of its historicity and the categories of work and artistic autonomy, among others. Such revision will help understand how contemporary artistic practices make sense in relation to the non-artistic societal and environmental reality in which they operate, and how the otherwise very diverse practices and works we designate as contemporary art function as art.

Contemporary artistic practices relate to, are conditioned and nourished by, take place and intervene in our sociopolitical and environmental ecosystemic realities. In this context, “reality” means what is at work, in operation, in the world.

The Danish word for reality, virkelighed (derived from the german Wirklichkeit), and really, virkelig, perhaps serves my point in a clearer way. In the Danish dictionary virkelighed is defined as “summary of the things, conditions or circumstances that actually exist or apply (at a certain time) – in contrast to the possible, probable, ideal or to what (only) exists in the imagination, dreams etc.” Virkelighed is a “state where something no longer only exists in thought, theory etc., but has gained actual existence in reality.” Something can become virkelighed or be made into virkelighed.

Reality is constituted by what is at work, virker, in the world; by what is in operation, what operates; and by what has effects and informs our perception and understanding of the world. The artistic practices in question here operate in and on reality and demonstrate that the reality of the world, virkeligheden, is negotiable and can be made to work, virke, otherwise (see autonomy and reflexive transformation).^[1]1 See Aesthetics of the Commons, edited by Shusba Niderberger, Cornelia Sollfrank, and Felix Stalder (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2021), https://diaphanes.net/titel/aesthetics-of-the-commons-6419. See also Boaventura de Sousa Santos,“ Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges,” Review — Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations 30, no. 1 (2007): 45-89, 45, http://www.jstor.org/stable /40241677: “Modern Western thinking is an abyssal thinking. It consists of a system of visible and invisible distinctions, the invisible ones being the foundation of the visible ones. The invisible distinctions are established through radical lines that divide social reality into two realms, the realm of “this side of the line” and the realm of “the other side of the line”. The division is such that “the other side of the line” vanishes as reality, becomes nonexistent, and is indeed produced as nonexistent. Nonexistent means not existing in any relevant or comprehensible way of being. Whatever is produced as nonexistent is radically excluded because it lies beyond the realm of what the accepted conception of inclusion considers to be its other. What most fundamentally characterizes abyssal thinking is thus the impossibility of the co-presence of the two sides of the line.”