This volume is dedicated to the interrelation between temporality and representation. It presumes that time cannot be conceived of as an abstract chronometric order, but that it is referring to materiality, being measured, represented, expressed, recognized, experienced and evaluated, and therefore is always closely related to cultural contexts of perception and evaluation. The contributions from various disciplines are dedicated to the present and its plural conditions and meanings. They provide insights into the state of research with special emphasis on the global present as well as on art and aesthetics from the 18th century until today. The anthology includes contributions by Mieke Bal, Stefan Binder, Maximilian Bergengruen, Iris Därmann, Gabriele Genge, Boris Roman Gibhardt, Boris Groys, Maria Muhle, Johannes F. Lehmann, Nkiru Nzegwu, Francesca Raimondi, Christine Ross, Ludger Schwarte, Angela Stercken, Samuel Strehle, Timm Trausch, Patrick Stoffel, and Christina Wessely.

Gabriele Genge is a professor for modern and contemporary art history and art theory at the University Duisburg-Essen. Her recent research covers particularly transcultural and postcolonial areas of the discipline with a specific focus on French Colonialism and African and African-American image theory, knowledge systems and epistemology as well as migratory issues in art history. She supervised the DFG research project 'The Anachronic and the Present: Aesthetic Perception and Artistic Concepts of Temporality in the Black Atlantic.' Ludger Schwarte is a professor of philosophy at the Kunstakademie Duesseldorf. After positions as assistant professor of image theory at the University of Basel and as a professor of aesthetics at the Zurich University of Arts, visiting scholarships led him to University Paris 8, GACVS (Washington), Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (Paris), University of Abidjan, Columbia University (New York), the EHESS (Paris) and to the IKKM (Weimar). His areas of research lie in aesthetics, political philosophy, philosophy of culture, ontology, and the history of science. Angela Stercken (PhD) is a senior researcher in the DFG project 'The Anachronic and the Present: Aesthetic Perception and Artistic Concepts of Temporality in the Black Atlantic' at the University of Duisburg-Essen and member of the DFG-Network 'Entangled Histories of Art and Migration: Forms, Visibilities, Agents.' Her research fields lie particularly in the theory of image in modern and contemporary art, in space, technology and timekeeping since the 18th century, in phenomena of temporality in art as well as migratory transcultural and transmedia processes especially in maritime spaces such as the transatlantic.