Art and distraction

But if what art must distract its viewers from – in order to function critically as art – is not just the cares and worries of the world, but, increasingly, distraction (entertainment) itself, how to distract from distraction without simply reproducing it? How is art to be received in distraction without becoming just another distraction? Alternatively, how is art to distract from distraction without losing touch with distraction, without entering another realm altogether? – 'contemplative immersion' in the work – with no relation to other distractions, and thereby becoming the vehicle of a flight from actuality, from the very temporal structure of experience which it must engage with if it is to be 'contemporary' and affective?

Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not At All (Verso, 2013) p. 178