List of Hans Haacke's works.

Foreword.

1. Helmsboro Country.

2. Sponsors who know the tune.

3. Creating a sensation.

4. Real simulacra.

5. The crusaders of 'high culture'.

6. Defense of the West and the return of absolutism.

7. In the state's noose.

8. A politics of form.

9. Plain speaking.

10. Too Good to be True (by Pierre Bourdieu).

11. Gondola! Gondola! (by Hans Haacke).

These are some of the questions discussed by the leading social thinker Pierre Bourdieu and the artist Hans Haacke in this remarkable new book. Their frank and open dialogue on contemporary art and culture ranges widely, from censorship and obscenity to the social conditions of artistic creativity. Among the examples they discuss are the controversies surrounding the exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, the debates concerning multiculturalism and ethnic diversity, and the uses of art as a means of contesting and disrupting symbolic domination. They also explore the central themes of Hans Haacke's work, which is used to illustrate the book.

Free Exchange is a timely intervention in current debates and a powerful analysis of the conditions and concerns of critical artists and intellectuals today.