The book contains a collection of essays by scholars and artists from a range of different fields including art, art history, architectural theory and philosophy. The essays are based on papers given at a symposium in Copenhagen in June 2008 and refer to the following considerations: When spectators confront and designers invent works of art and architecture, vital questions regarding their appearance arise. These are not simply questions about what appears, also what does not, i.e. what withdraws when works are experienced and created. How do we cope with this withdrawal, with latencies that escape concretization? What are the productive paradoxes associated hereto and how do they influence the processes of making? Based on multiple discourses on these subjects, contemporary positions in art, architecture and philosophy draw up new challenges, especially with regard to the creative practices. Within and between these positions emerge potentials for modes of thinking and doing with a new sensitivity.

With contributions by Michael Asgaard Andersen and Henrik Oxvig, Renaud Barbaras, Andrew Benjamin, Olafur Eliasson, Sanford Kwinter, David Leatherbarrow, Martin Seel, David Summers and Sven-Olov Wallenstein