Transformations (Book)

Art and the City

Edited by Elizabeth Grierson Series edited by Graham Cairns

Transformations explores the interactions between people and their urban surroundings through site-specific art and creative practices, tracing the ways people shape their cities. This collection also investigates the politics and democratization of space through an examination of art, education, justice and the role of the citizen in the city. 

Series: Mediated Cities

Edition

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.

Elizabeth M. Grierson is professor of art and philosophy at RMIT University, Australia, and editor of the academic journal ACCESS: Critical Perspectives on Communications, Cultural & Policy Studies. She is a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in the United Kingdom and an adjunct professor at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. She is also an Australian Legal Practitioner, Barrister, and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand.

Section I
Mapped City
 
Reading the Mapped City 
William Cartwright
 
Carto-City Revisited: Unmapping urbaness 
Maggie McCormick
 
Sensing Sydney: An experiment in public art of the smart eco-city 
Jodi Newcombe
 
Section II
Contested City
 
Travels and Tapestries: Possibilities for creative exchange in Melbourne and Phnom Penh
Clare McCracken and Roger Nelson
 
Art as Enterprise
Grace McQuilten
 
Recipe for Homefullness 
Keely Macarow
 
Interrogating Space: The 'Urban Laboratory'
Fiona Hillary and Geoff Hogg
 
Section III
Pedagogical City
 
Writing transparadiso: Across and beside 
Jane Rendell
 
Raising Alterity: Working towards a just city 
Elizabeth M. Grierson
 
Fragments, Lyotard and Earthquakes: A mosaic of memory and broken pieces
Kirsten Locke and Sarah Yates
 
Section IV
Temporal City
 
Feature 13: Suburban 'Terrain Vague'
Anthony McInneny
 
Beyond the Tarmac: Temporality and the roadside art of Melbourne 
Ashley Perry
 
Walking the Post-Quake City: (Re)making the place in Ōtautahi Christchurch
Barbara Garrie
 
Section V
Creative City
 
Listening to the City 
Kristen Sharp
 
Applying the Creative City: Curating art in urban spaces
Tammy Wong Hulbert
 
The Poetic City: Old songs left beneath the arches
Nicholas Lyon Gresson

'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.'

Public Art Review
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