{"product_id":"art-was-never-there-nostalgia-and-the-creative-act-paperback","title":"Art Was Never There: Nostalgia and the Creative ACT - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eMitch Speed\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eContemporary art is deeply nostalgic, haunted by a time when \"in-the-flesh\" experiences of it held profound social importance. But did it ever really play such a role? In \u003ci\u003eArt Was Never There: Nostalgia and the Creative Act\u003c\/i\u003e, Mitch Speed asks whether contemporary art is doomed to become an obsolete curiosity, or if it can act as a site of resistance against an algorithmically driven culture industry that fuels alienation and wreaks havoc on the earth. Traveling through histories of artistic practice and thought, Speed traces the mechanisms through which art's search for a lost purpose gives way to a populist pseudo-authenticity. In this way, the book shows how contemporary art figures in the political struggles of our time, and in particular how left- and right-wing politics are equally enthralled by nostalgia. \u003ci\u003eArt Was Never There\u003c\/i\u003e shuttles between new writing and quotation, using its own textual form to navigate past and present, fantasy, and the real.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eMitch Speed is a Canadian writer based in Berlin. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eFiorucci Made Me Hardcore\u003c\/i\u003e (Afterall Books, 2019), a book-length study of Mark Leckey's video artwork of the same name. His writing has appeared in \u003ci\u003eArtforum\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eFrieze\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eArtReview\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eCamera Austria\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eCanadian Art\u003c\/i\u003e, and Momus.ca, among other publications. \u003ci\u003eA Breaking Signal\u003c\/i\u003e, a collection of his essays on art, is forthcoming from Brick Press.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 168\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e November 11, 2025\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47176868757753,"sku":"9783982389493","price":32.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/2782\/3097\/files\/QilVfPHt0a9783982389493.webp?v=1767690878","url":"https:\/\/bookscloud.io\/products\/art-was-never-there-nostalgia-and-the-creative-act-paperback","provider":"BooksCloud Book Dropshipping","version":"1.0","type":"link"}