Book excerpt: 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. Bespreking in: Boekman.25(2013)96(najaar.118-119) door Pieter Hoexum en bespreking in: Rekto:verso. (2013)59(dec-jan).