A standard interpretation of the Latin phrase “Ars longa, vita brevis” is that it takes a long time to master an art or technology. Another interpretation is that art lasts , longer even than a human life. Paul Chan suggests a third possibility: that art extends life itself. To support this reading, he discusses the work of Chris Marker and the artist duo Arakawa and Gins, as well as describing experiences from his own private research in the domain of artificial intelligence. Hellenistic mathematicians Archimedes and Eratosthenes, who fused poetry with calculation to capture the “unbounded” or “infinite,” are invoked through the work of the scholar Reviel Netz. Naturally, Faust appears.

Paul Chan reflects on his experiences as an artist working in and out of domains of technology, from truetype fonts and pirated software to datasets and machine-learning frameworks. He recounts periods of his artistic life when he abandoned technologies as instruments of production. And he offers an idiosyncratic account of a lineage of artists and writers he admires who used and abused technology in aspects of their work—including Agnès Varda, Chris Marker, the Left Bank Group in 1960s, Yvonne Rainer, Theodor Adorno and the Radio Research Project; the bio-cybernetic work of free-jazz musician, programmer, and artist Milford Graves; the pioneering sound work of Maryanne Amacher; and the writer Claudia La Rocco—and how their dynamic and at times contentious relationship with technology proved vital to their understanding of what art under the influence of historical and social progress looks like.

“A Questionnaire on Monuments” features 49 responses to questions formulated by Leah Dickerman, Hal Foster, David Joselit, and Carrie Lambert-Beatty: “From Charlottesville to Cape Town, there have been struggles over monuments and other markers involving histories of racial conflict. How do these charged situations shed light on the ethics of images in civil society today? Speaking generally or with specific examples in mind, please consider any of the following questions: What histories do these public symbols represent, what histories do they obscure, and what models of memory do they imply? How do they do this work, and how might they do it differently? What social and political forces are in play in their erection or dismantling? Should artists, writers, and art historians seek a new intersection of theory and praxis in the social struggles around such monuments and markers? How might these debates relate to the question of who is authorized to work with particular images and archives?”

Paul Chan's speech, first delivered on the occasion of Engage More Now! A Symposium on Artists, Museums, and Publics at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (November 2015), proposes that artistic experiences be understood as forms that vividly emblematizes the relationship between cunning and reasoning. It considers the ways in which this relationship echoes within the broadest arenas of social life and how such an outlook could upend what have become standard and increasingly tedious debates about aesthetics, politics, and social engagement in art. Chan also delivers a brief attack against the xenophobic and racist 2016 G.O.P presidential candidates, in particular Donald Trump.

In October 2010, I emailed Chris to ask if he was interested in taking part in a special issue of E-flux Journal that art critic Sven Lütticken and I were editing. The issue focused on whether contemporary art had addressed the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the US, and elsewhere, and how these largely nationalistic, homophobic, and xenophobic movements impacted culture and art. With the ascendance of the Tea Party, Sven and I wondered if it were possible to chart a genealogy of right-wing groups on both sides of the Atlantic and illuminate their familial relations.