Developed as an exploratory study of artworks by artists of Singapore and Malaysia, Retrospective attempts to account for contemporary artworks that engage with history. These are artworks that reference past events or narratives, of the nation and its art. Through the examination of a selection of artworks produced between 1990 and 2012, Retrospective is both an attribution and an analysis of a historiographical aesthetic within contemporary art practice. It considers that, by their method and in their assembly, these artworks perform more than a representation of a historical past. Instead, they confront history and its production, laying bare the nature and designs of the historical project via their aesthetic project. Positing an interdisciplinary approach as necessary for understanding the historiographical as aesthetic, Retrospective considers not only historical and aesthetic perspectives, but also the philosophical, by way of ontology, in order to broaden its exposition beyond the convention of historical and contextual interpretation of art. Yet, in associating these artworks with a historiographical aesthetic, this exposition may be regarded as a historiographical exercise in itself, affirming the significance of these artworks for the history of Singapore and Malaysia. In short, which history rarely is, Retrospective is about the art of historicisation and the historicisation of art.

The Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries Since 1975 is the final volume of the four-volume series of cultural histories of the avant-garde movements in the Nordic countries. This volume carries the avant-garde discussion forward to present-day avant-gardes, challenged by the globalisation of the entertainment industries and new interactive media such as the internet. The avant-garde can now be considered a tradition that has been made more widely available through the opening of archives, electronic documentation and new research, which has spurred both re-enactments, revisions and continuations of historical avant-garde practices, while new cultural contexts, political, technological and ecological conditions have called for new strategies.

Rewrites our understanding of the last 50 years of Chicana/o cultural production. Chicana/o Remix casts new light not only on artists-such as Sandra de la Loza, Judy Baca, and David Botello, among others-but on the exhibitions that feature their work, and the collectors, curators, critics, and advocates who engage it. Combining feminist theory, critical ethnic studies, art historical analysis, and extensive archival and field research, Karen Mary Davalos argues that narrow notions of identity, politics, and aesthetics limit our ability to understand the full capacities of Chicana/o art. She employs fresh vernacular concepts such as the "errata exhibit," or the staging of exhibits that critically question mainstream art museums, and the "remix," or the act of bringing new narratives and forgotten histories from the background and into the foreground. These concepts, which emerge out of art practice itself, drive her analysis and reinforce the rejection of familiar narratives that evaluate Chicana/o art in simplistic, traditional terms, such as political versus commercial, or realist versus conceptual. Throughout Chicana/o Remix, Davalos explores undocumented or previously ignored information about artists, their cultural production, and the exhibitions and collections that feature their work. Each chapter exposes and challenges conventions in art history and Chicana/o studies, documenting how Chicana artists were the first to critically challenge exhibitions of Chicana/o art, tracing the origins of the first Chicano arts organizations, and highlighting the influence of Europe and Asia on Chicana/o artists who traveled abroad. As a leading scholar in the study of Chicana/o artists, art spaces, and exhibition practices, Davalos presents her most ambitious project to date in this re-examination of fifty years of Chicana/o art production.

While highlighting the prevailing role of television in Western societies, Art vs. TV maps and condenses a comprehensive history of the relationships of art and television. With a particular focus on the link between reality and representation, Francesco Spampinato analyzes video art works, installations, performances, interventions and television programs made by contemporary artists as forms of resistance to and appropriation and parody of mainstream television. The artists discussed belong to different generations: those that emerged in the 1960s in association with art movements such as Pop Art, Fluxus and Happening; and those appearing on the scene in the 1980s, whose work aimed at deconstructing media representation in line with postmodernist theories; to those arriving in the 2000s, an era in which, through reality shows and the Internet, anybody could potentially become a media personality; and finally those active in the 2010s, whose work reflects on how old media like television has definitively vaporized through the electronic highways of cyberspace. These works and phenomena elicit a tension between art and television, exposing an incongruence; an impossibility not only to converge but at the very least to open up a dialogical exchange.