'Introduction'

Realism Materialism Art (RMA) presents a snapshot of the emerging and rapidly changing set of ideas, practices, and challenges proposed by contemporary realisms and materialisms, re ecting their nascent reworking of art, philosophy, culture, theory, and science, among other elds. Further, RMA strives to expand the hori- zons and terms of engagement with realism and materialism beyond the primarily philosophical context in which their recent developments have taken place, often under the title “Speculative Realism” (SR). While it is SR that has most stridently challenged critical orthodoxies (even if, as discussed later in this introduction, the positions convened under the SR banner are often discordant and form no uni ed movement), RMA purposefully looks to extend the purview of realist and materialist thought by presenting recent developments in a number of distinct and heteroge- neous practices and disciplines. Cutting across diverse thematic interests and modes of investigation, the con- tributions to RMA demonstrate the breadth and challenge of realist and materialist approaches to received disciplinary categories and forms of practice. This pluridis- ciplinarity is typical of the third term in our title: art. RMA a rms, as art now does, that there is no privileged area, thematic, or discipline in the investigation or reach of realism and materialism: not philosophy, not science, not even art itself. Art is then not just a eld trans gured by realism and materialism; it is also a method for convening and extending what they are taken to be and do when extended beyond philosophical argument

[catalog] Haim Steinbach : object and display : once again the world is flat /

Published on the occasion of the related exhibitions "Once Again the World is Flat" held at the Center for Curatorial Studies and Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., June 22-Dec. 20, 2013, the Serpentine Galleries, London, Mar. 5-May 5, 2014 and at the Kunsthalle Zürich, May 24-Aug. 17, 2014.Includes an interview with the artist by Tom Eccles, Beatrix Ruf and Hans Ulrich Obrist.Includes bibliographical references