We expect art to be critical: critical of institutions, society, art itself. Simultaneously, there is no art that exhausts itself in critique. Even the most critical art has affirmative traits. How can we think the possible coexistence of critique and affirmation? What, actually, is critique and what does affirmation mean? Are they nothing but antitheses? Do they exclude each other? Is it that simple? Or do we need a critique of critique? It is time to complicate the all-too-uncritical binary of critique and affirmation, by redefining the term “critique.” Let’s start by defining criticality as the attitude of those who do not want to be stupid—in which stupidity means an ignorance toward the social, political, economic, cultural facts and determinants that affect and structure our thinking and artistic practice. Critical art is sensitive for its factual codification, which implies analytical vigilance and reflection of its own situation, of the context or the multiplicity of contexts in which it is moving. There is no production left untouched by facts. Just like any other activity, artistic activity is subject to being codified. Historical, techno-historical, ideologically political—in short, situation-based implications determine artistic production on an elementary level. Art does not happen in a vacuum—if it happens at all. It articulates itself in relation to what is present, as Horkheimer and Adorno say, which is why its criticality has double demands: The confrontation of its situated position and fact-dependence on the one hand; on the other, the analysis of the limits of this dependence. What belongs to the affirmative moment of art is the confession of passively or even actively running affirmations, while affirmation must not be confused with approval. If I approve of the time in which I live and am artistically active (whatever that might even mean!), that changes nothing about the fact that I’m living in it. It is the unparalleled element, which I, at least during my lifetime, cannot simply step out of.