Alain Badiou – Contemporary Art Confronting the 21st Century
(94 min; 2015; English)

Video recording of a talk delivered by the well-known French philosopher Alain Badiou organised by 
Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York on 7th February 2015. 

Tracing the history and evolution of the arts in the twentieth century, Alain Badiou addresses the new conditions posed by the twenty-first century which he says is facing technical challenges comparable only to the invention of the printing press, or to the emergence of oil painting: the ability to digitize, including basic creative gestures, affords a sort of independence to the term “art" from the notion of “craft." Artistic contexts of a semi-industrial type have appeared, and moreover, the systematic occupation by artists in the West of wastelands left by deindustrialization has become a major symbol of the period: creation nowadays takes place in old automobile factories and workshops, in outdated giant cold storage warehouses, in the huge debris of assembly line labour, in sawdust, tar, and gasoline. What will come out of this? Let us make a few assumptions..."
— Alain Badiou