The ‘Atlas of Arcadia’ is a fascinating contribution to the much-discussed relationship between contemporary art and history.

The book, created by the artists Anna Artaker and Meike S. Gleim contains over 300 illustrations, and features image montages on the history of the late 20th and early 21st century.

The starting point for the ‘Atlas of Arcadia’ is Walter Benjamin’s famous ‘Arcades Project’. The artists Artaker and Gleim translate this fragmentary history of the 19th century – which Benjamin conceived as a ‘literary montage’ – into manifold image montages and transfer Benjamin’s motifs for our immediate past.

The resulting historiography impresses both visually and as an artistic approach to Benjamin’s philosophy of history.