Critically challenging the notion of cities as hegemonic spaces, Transformations: Art and the City explores interactions between the human subject and their urban surroundings through site-specific art and creative practices, tracing the ways in which Chapters include case-studies raging from corporate- and public-funded art in Sydney; creative exchanges in Cambodia; politically-engaged enterprise art in the USA; affordable housing models in Australia; street-art under surveillance in Melbourne; and community memorial in post-disaster New Zealand, amongst others. People live, imagine and shape their cities. Drawing on the work of artists globally, from Cambodia to Australia, New Zealand to the USA, this edited collection investigates the politics and democratization of space through an examination of art, education, justice, and the role of the citizen in the city. The writers critically and poetically engage with the temporality and genealogies of public spaces, and ask: how do we reconcile artistic practices with an urbanism driven by globalization and capital? And is there room for aesthetic practices in urban discourse? This collection explores how creative practices can work in tandem with ever-changing urban technologies and ecologies to both disrupt and shape urban public spaces, democratization of space through an examination of art, education, justice and the role of the citizen in the city.
Industry Reviews
'This wide-ranging collection of essays is the fruit of a symposium held at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, in 2014. Artists, media professionals, and specialists in public policy, law, business, science, cartography, geography, and many other fields convened to ask: How can we understand the contemporary city "through an aesthetic lens-and what possibilities exist for transformative action?" Topics range from art projects intended to revitalize city neighborhoods to artistic interventions in the justice system to artists as recorders and archivists of urban realities.'
