Christian Boltanski's votive installations, archives and objects, revolving around the fragile polarities of memory and amnesia, identity and anonymity, have made him one of the world's most renowned contemporary artists. And yet, despite the centrality of biography and testimony to his work, Boltanski's own story is little known and has never been fully told. Published on the occasion of the artist's sixty-fifth birthday, The Possible Life of Christian Boltanski, written in the form of a book-length interview (which the artist likens to a "psychoanalysis" or "confession") with the art historian Catherine Grenier, is Boltanski's oral autobiography. In it, he recounts his unusual wartime childhood ("my mother hid my father under the floorboards. He stayed there for a year and a half, between two floors in the house. He'd come out from time to time--I'm living proof of that "), his career, friendships and marriage, successes and regrets, his approaches to art and teaching, how he created various installations, his relations with dealers and the public, and other matters that illuminate as never before his complex, enigmatic works. Boltanski is refreshingly phlegmatic about the realities of the world (art and otherwise), and he relates his remarkable stories--some enormously amusing, others tragic--with a matter-of-factness and self-deprecating humor that highlight his capacity for humane responsiveness. As both the self-portrait of a major contemporary artist and a frank, fascinating memoir, this is a document of capital importance.

"This book is a journey through the defining moments and choices in the life and career of Christian Boltanski, which led the artist to reflect upon the outcome of some of the main historical events of the twentieth century and on the need to reconsider appropriate methods of representation. History, histories and the statute of the image are the fulcrums of the conversation he proposes. This conversation focuses in particular on the following fundamental themes: the difference between collective memory, recollection and oblivion; the relation between the individual and the crowd; the entity of absence intended as proof of a destroyed presence, but also as a device for the reactivation of memory; the incidence of an isolated gaze, that of the observer, upon whose primacy the history of western art has built its foundations."--Back cover.

The construction of the metro line under the city of Amsterdam between 2003 and 2012 provided an excellent opportunity to investigate the past by organizing archaeological excavations. The department Monuments & Archaeology of the city of Amsterdam have been working on this since the start of construction in 2003. The main archaeological sites were situated on the Damrak and the Rokin. These excavations were very deep, as far as 25 m below ground, at which depth the layers of soil dated from the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago. On top of these old layers the archaeologists found the riverbed of the Amstel which still runs through the city. The riverbed extended to a depth of 12 meter and was full of archaeological finds. In the old days people often dumped their refuse in the water. Also objects fell in the river by accident and sunk into the muddy river bed. The archaeological excavations produced almost 700,000 finds. Stuff gathers the archaeological finds from the riverbed into a material history of the city.

What is the relevance of Luc Boltanski’s ‘pragmatic sociology of critique’ to central issues in contemporary social and political analysis? In seeking to respond to this question, this book contains critical commentaries from prominent social theorists attempting to map out the influence and broad scope of Boltanski’s oeuvre.

"Many years ago this artist placed a singles ad in Denver's alternative weekly newspaper. The headline read "Work Hard, Play Hard" and now this book celebrates 25 years of happy marriage thanks to a fun advertising experiment. In a bit of whimsy, image and text play off of each other to create irreverent pairings of singles pick-up lines with intimate portraits of abandoned furniture that can be found cast aside like a bad romance on city streets everywhere. Twenty Polaroid-style photographs are paired with text highlighting the becoming features of the lonely furniture"--Artist's statement

Christian Boltanski ISBN 3-7757-1825-7 / 978-3-7757-1825-7 Hardcover, 8.75 x 11.25 in. / 160 pgs / 125 color. / U.S. $55.00 CDN $66.00 January / Art