The Radical Unpresent

A necessary and timely exploration of art activism today, informed by centuries of protest. How contemporary artists and activists are navigating and resisting the collapse of historical time in our uncanny present. The Radical Unpresent examines our disorienting contemporary moment, in which our experience of time has become profoundly disrupted. Building on his earlier work on “dark matter” in the art world, Gregory Sholette introduces the concept of the unpresent—a condition in which everything appears the same yet is completely transformed, lacking both a past and a future. Never one to be content with the status quo, Sholette reveals the inner workings of a “phantom archive”—a surplus repository of activist practices, unrealized possibilities, and spectral histories that artists access through repair, repurposing, and reenactment. Through examples ranging from Dread Scott’s slave rebellion reenactment to contemporary Belarus protest art, he demonstrates how artists are creating temporal interventions that acknowledge historical wounds while opening pathways to alternative futures.