‘Contemporary art’ is the operative but undefinable term that refers to the vast, heterogeneous realm of current artistic expressions, strongly influenced by the triumph of the new media, without that implying the extinction of classical media, especially since the modernist idea of ‘overcoming’ is no longer valid. The object of endless debate and controversy, contemporary art has been besieged by questions of value, aesthetic criteria, and autonomy in relation to institutions and the art market. Never before has art had so many institutions at its service: contemporary art centres, museums, fairs, biennales and galleries have created a ‘system’ with its own rules and codes and have multiplied and hierarchised spaces of celebration, but also new modes of legitimation. This dossier on contemporary art that we have prepared from an eclectic perspective, focusing on art criticism, sociology and economy, reflects not only on aesthetic issues and artistic forms, but also on the way the system works and its determinations. We have invited internationally renowned artists and theorists to write about the various aspects of contemporary art: Camille de Toledo, Yves Michaud, Paul Werner, Jovan Mrvaljevic and Gregory Sholette.

In this interview on his work and life, Adam Phillips talks about psychoanalysis, literature and the relationship between the two – both in terms of his personal activity and what it is that comprises them as fields of human understanding and intervention. Phillips is a psychoanalyst, literary critic and essayist with a vast and diverse oeuvre that has been translated into many languages. He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, the Observer and The New York Times and is currently coordinating the new Penguin complete works of Freud. In this quick-moving conversation with the interviewer Afonso Dias Ramos, the British academic talks about the world today, the changes that have occurred and those that may yet take place. He suggests that we should be attempting to have more open and flexible conversations.

A critical reading of Alain Badiou’s lessons on the Wagner 'case' — the aesthetic-political argument for the total work of art.

In this article, Chantal Mouffe, professor of political theory at the University of Westminster, England, continues to formulate some of the ideas developed in her books: an agonistic conception of politics, i.e. one that does not seek consensus and integrates affects and passions; and a recovery from some aspects of populism towards a radicalisation of democracy.

Alec Soth is currently one of the biggest names in American photography, with a world-renowned oeuvre. The portfolio created for this issue of Electra, which he has entitled ‘Unseen Teen’, presents photos of various series, in particular those belonging to his project USA. Postcards from America V, taken in 2014. In these images of America’s ‘invisible’ youth, what is seen (faces, bodies, hair, gestures, attitudes) corresponds to and re-presents what is not seen (feelings, sensations, states of mind, dismay, emptiness), the one side representing signs of the other. There are also symptoms of a latent disease ready to release an approaching and threatening howl. This howl stems from violence, vulgarity, antagonism, precariousness, doubt, mistrust and adolescent kitsch. The photographer and his work are presented here by the critic and curator Sérgio Mah.

‘When I went to Harvard, people thought that social housing was not architecture’, recalls architect Alejandro Aravena in this interview given to architect and researcher Ana Vaz Milheiros, for Electra. Distinguished with the Pritzker Prize in 2016, Alejandro Aravena is known worldwide for the originality of his work, in which the relationship between architecture, housing, society and nature is of paramount importance. In this conversation, punctuated by themes that are present in the plural activity that he has been developing, Aravena also talks about the experience of designing and building in Lisbon.

In this interview, the great North-American painter Alex Katz, who is ninety-five years old and whose works are part of the collections of the world’s most important museums, talks to Juan Manuel Bonet about painting, colour, light, life and the places where it happens. It is an enchanting conversation, full of wisdom and subtlety. Juan Manuel Bonet is a profound connoisseur of the New York-born artist. He was the director of the Reina Sofía Art Centre and of IVAM [Institut Valencià d'Art Modern], where he organised a retrospective dedicated to the painter in 1997. Here, he offers a personal introduction to this powerful work, as well as choosing the images that represent it. Among the exhibitions that will take place in various cities around the world in 2022–23, this autumn Alex Katz’s career will receive a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

The renowned German director and writer Alexander Kluge, who has worked with, among others, Theodor Adorno and Fritz Lang, has dedicated his life to thinking about images and their place in culture. For the ‘Portfolio’ of this issue of Electra, this fundamental figure of contemporary critical thinking talks with his collaborator, writer Ulrike Sprenger and Leander Gussmann, a researcher of artistic and cultural studies, about the analytical and cooperative method that he has developed in his monumental work. He shows how the images can be read, how they are superimposed and come into being, using an iconological grammar that is surprisingly revealing of the world and the time in which we live. True to his method, he also deals with current issues, such as the War and the opposition to it, and finally, with a central metaphor in his work: the garden. This conversation between Kluge and his interlocutors is made up of words and images, in a verbal-visual composition that, due to its originality and interest, constitutes a fundamental document that must not be lost.

Alexander Kluge has been an exceptional figure in German culture since the nineteen sixties. As a writer, film maker and essayist, he has provided a critical conscience not only in relation to Germany, compelling it to confront the traumas of its history, but also in relation to many aspects of the mutilation of life in the world in which we live.

‘Scoop’ is a new section of Electra that allows authors to unveil original, unpublished work. In this first ‘Scoop’, the highly-esteemed Indian photographer, painter and director Sarah Singh, who lives between India and New York, presents her next film, Alexandra, in words and images. She began to imagine this film, a ‘work in progress’, twelve years ago and is shooting it now. Alexandra, the feminine form of Alexander, symbolises the great undertaking of a woman director who wants to connect the distant past with the present.