On the edge of the 21st century, our focus was resolutely on the present, on what was going on around us and how we were all coping with the delights and depressions of life. The question of how to adequately represent to ourselves the present moment, the actuality of ‘now is central to the show we are presenting. Nothing is more difficult to catch than the sharp edge of the present, fleeting and complex as it is. Most of the works we present in Manuals for the 21st century address this difficulty of representing the present, even more than the impossibility of predicting the future.