This investigation of the societal self-understanding of contemporary art and the conditions of artistic production in late capitalist industrial society, which starts from the productive power of the artist themselves, aims at both understanding and changing the current state. It assumes that materialist art theory cannot be pursued from a distance that turns the producers into objects of theory and the art market, even under today's conditions. Only a method of investigation that resembles the form of a discussion allows artists to experience themselves as subjectively turned matter within the contradictory societal process, and emancipates them from their object role, in which they risk perishing in isolation and silence. Five young social scientists.