The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival is an artwork, a sculpture, created by Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn in a peripheral borough of Amsterdam's south-east known as the Bijlmer in 2009. This book recounts the event through the eyes of its "Ambassador", art historian Vittoria Martini, who was invited by the artist to be an eyewitness to the existence of this "precarious" work. A term Hirschhorn sees as positive and creative: a means of asserting the importance of the moment and of the place, of asserting the Here and Now to touch eternity and universality. Appreciating the art historian's presence as a central element of his sculpture, Hirschhorn consciously challenged the certainties of the profession by empowering and activating the role, thus leading Martini to find a new working methodology that she calls "precarious art history". Accompanying the readers through her experience of the physical existence of The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival, Martini's commentary leads to the profound understanding of how a work that no longer exists physically, can live on in the mind- elsewhere, at some other time-because in the meantime it has become universal.

Alfredo Jaar's immersive site-specific installation in the Chilean pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, Venezia Venezia is a call to examine how today's culture, composed of increasingly complex global networks, can be adequately represented on a world stage.This publication features essays by 18 prominent, international authors from different fields of work and thought, including political and philosophical thinkers, critics, theorists, art historians and curators. Their contributions consider Venezia Venezia in its critical context, as well d recent global developments and the volatile conditions of contemporary art practice.