From #1

From is a new art annual, published by Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. From #1 features a series of short essays which provide an art historical and theoretical context to the institution's exhibition program, and will investigate and represent the European cultural identity as seen from the practice of contemporary art. Among the contributors to this first issue are Thomas Y. Levin, Tzvetan Todorov, Giorgio Agamben, Sami Nair, Clement Rosset, Paul Bowles, Ronald Herzog, Ursula Rogg, Laura Emsley, and Matthew Geller. As Bartomeu Mari writes in his editorial preface to the first issue, "From #1 refuses the conventional idea that contemporary art is an elitist activity. Art is made for the public, but its impact on the public cannot be quantified through the immediacy of ticket sales to a given exhibition. The fruit of a layering process, art acts as a brake on the constant acceleration that the world undergoes everyday.... Reducing the velocity of events does not mean immobilizing them, but offering greater possibilities for perception and evaluation.... From will pay special attention to the notion of diversity in art and culture.... Local, national, and international are words in search of new meanings, even as the relations between high culture and popular culture desperately need new criteria of articulation".