ENTKUNSTUNG II Editors' Note

We are convinced, as Borges was, that a book has to go beyond the intention of its author. We are aware, however, that its transcendence depends on the capabilities to overcome the many limitations of time and the human condition.

We recognise that the content of this book that is now in your hands has exceeded our limitations and expectations; fortunately, we can say that we have failed in our primary intention. The artworks and texts that compose this yearbook make us feel privileged as editors and readers, given the power of imagination, abstraction and understanding of our time by each and every one of the contributors that made it happen.

This year we have seen the need to ensure our commitment to the present actively, and to respond with this platform that is ENTKUNSTUNG to the challenges that our time is forcing us to face. Populism has ceased to be a ghost of the past, and it has been established in our society. Everywhere around the world irresponsible leaders without shame are assaulting our democratic institutions, supported by majorities in their worst and most deluded version. This is one of the many reasons why it is impossible for us to attend this spectacle of history as mere passive spectators.

As editors, we have a responsibility towards our time, but above all, we are firmly committed to the artworks and articles, to the endeavour made by artists and authors, who with their particular language are encouraging us to comprehend, to confront and to disrupt the status quo that reigns in our contemporaneity. Thus, our effort is simple: We try to serve as intermediaries between artists and readers, wishing that the pages that follow will forge new experiences and questions about the essence of our time.

History, as many philosophers and historians have said, is a problem that is conjugated in the present tense, and that makes use of the imperative form. Understanding the contemporary world and finding out as much as possible about its raison d‘être and the phenomena that characterise it is an obligation in times where there are fewer excuses for being passive, permissive, and indifferent. Instead of merely wondering at the complexity of our world, we must strengthen our ability to interpret it and criticise it. This is what the artists and authors present in this book are fostering with their envisions of life: creating possible worlds that are contributing to shaping a more thoughtful and collective present.

We hope you can see this book as we do: as an extension of memory; interpretations of our time that aspire to reinvent the world anew, “as a whole to be imagined”.

—FELIPE DUQUE & MAXIMILIAN MAURACHER
December 2018