ABSTRACT

Artistic practices have long been disturbing the relationships between art and space. They have challenged the boundaries of performer/spectator, of public/private, introduced intervention and installation, ephemerality and performance, and constantly sought out new modes of distressing expectations about what is construed as art. But when we expand the world in which we look at art, how does this change our understanding of critical artistic practice?

This book presents a global perspective on the relationship between art and the city. International and leading scholars and artists themselves present critical theory and practice of contemporary art as a politicised force. It extends thinking on contemporary arts practices in the urban and political context of protest and social resilience and offers the prism of a ‘critical artscape’ in which to view the urgent interaction of arts and the urban politic. The global appeal of the book is established through the general topic as well as the specific chapters, which are geographically, socially, politically and professionally varied. Contributing authors come from many different institutional and anti-institutional perspectives from across the world.

This will be valuable reading for those interested in cultural geography, urban geography and urban culture, as well as contemporary art theorists, practitioners and policymakers.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

Disruptions of a critical artscape

chapter |14 pages

The collective moment

Post-Museum’s Rowell Road period

chapter |15 pages

Art/movement as a public 
platform

Artistic creations in the sunflower 
movement and the umbrella movement 1

chapter |13 pages

Ghana ThinkTank

Mobility, reversal and cultural difference

chapter |15 pages

Diversifying the stage 
of policymaking

A new policy network in Berlin’s cultural field

chapter |13 pages

Alternative art schools in London

Contested space and the emergence of new modes of learning in practice

chapter |14 pages

RENT Poet

Commodity, respectability, and 
scam in Los Angeles

chapter |19 pages

The climate games

Space, politics and resistance at the COP21 Paris

chapter |19 pages

New genre public commission?

The subversive dimension of public art in post-Fordist capitalism

chapter |11 pages

Unpacking public places in Gothenburg – The Event City

Becoming a cannibal

chapter |13 pages

Crowd creations

Interpreting occupy art in Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement

chapter |22 pages

#Beirut, urbanism and me

Framing the city through space, identity and conflict

chapter |9 pages

Conclusion

Towards the worlding of art and the city?