The defining question of modern art was how to release the image from
representation. The problem for contemporary art is how to find new approaches,
materials, techniques, and technologies for remapping this
question in ways responsive to our current history and media environment.
What has the image become under new conditions of technological
production and reproduction, amplified flows of communication through
social and mass media, and the global expansion of neoliberalism,
both politically and economically? In this chapter, Rodowick appeals to
Theodor Adorno’s late writings on aesthetics to evaluate contemporary
art’s critical responses to its current technological and social condition
in works by Philippe Parreno, Sturtevant, Pierre Huyghe, Michel Majerus,
Cory Arcangel, and other international artists.