Introduction : When flatness rules / Pascal Gielen -- Part I: Transforming attitudes -- Institutional imagination : instituting contemporary art minus the 'contemporary' / Pascal Gielen -- Where is the critic? / Thijs Lijster -- The place of art in art places / Jimmie Durham -- Part II: Horizontal strategies? -- Institutions as sites of agonistic intervention / Chantal Mouffe -- On democracy and occupation : horizontality and the need for new forms of verticality / Isabell Lorey -- Indirect action : some misgivings about horizontalism / Mark Fisher -- Bartleby's tragic aporia / Sonja Lavaert -- Institutionality as enlightenment / Blake Stimson -- Part III: Instituting in a flat world -- Flatness rules : instituent practices and institutions of the common in a flat world / Gerald Raunig -- Institutions with an attitude, and networks : toward a republic of arts in a spiked world and toward world art history / Marc Jacobs -- Instituting change : the protocol as a productive space of conflict / Markus Miessen -- Institutional mores / Alex Farquharson -- Afterword : let's go back to the beginning / Bart De Baere, Ann Demeester, Nicolaus Schafhausen.