Art in the City, the City in Art

This Book examines an interplay between discourses on the city that stress the

need for rational-functional order and art's imaginative deviations from the topdown

structures of urban life. Moving between theory and praxis, the book

situates the city as both a concept and physical construct through which lives and

possibilities are shaped or defined. In response, certain modalities of art create

spontaneous, non-rational and playful interludes that risk escape from the urban

apparatus and a hyper-valorisation of rational order. A three-part framework is

used to discuss this push-pull dynamic and to assess the strategies of shock,

performative embodiment and intervention that emerged in post-war art

movements and in contemporary performance and participatory art practices.

The book examines how the disturbances introduced by artists throw the city

construct into sharp relief, making it visible and activating momentary encounters

where new modes of expression can emerge.

This Book offers a new approach to interdisciplinary studies of art and urbanity.

The book aims to delineate how the cityas concept and constructis made

visible through artistic practice and in turn challenged or interrogated. Students,

researchers and professionals with an interest in the interaction between art and

urban studies will discover a new perspective on how urban conditions and issues

have been addressed through artistic practice. The book contributes to an

evolving discourse in the urban humanities through an exposition of the city's

default construct that is made visible or reimagined through visual art in public

spaces.

The first sustained dialogue between emerging forms of urbanity and art practice from an art historical perspective The only book that attends equally to discourses of urban development and strategies of urban intervention in art A book that situates art interventions in urban space as responses to the instrument of top-down urban planning

Auteur

Elisha Masemann (PhD, The University of Auckland 2018) is a researcher and educator in visual art practice and urban theory. She has taught art history at The University of Auckland and was awarded the Kate Edger Charitable Trust Postdoctoral Research Award in 2018. With Cameron Cartiere (Emily Carr University of Art + Design) and Leon Tan (Unitec), Masemann co-authored 'Mapping art in the public realm 2008-2018' in The Routledge companion to art in the public realm (2021).

Contenu
Chapter 1: Establishing the city's 'ground rules'.- Part I: Hardware.- Chapter 2: A rational city programme.- Chapter 3:Critical responses to the 'city plan'.- Chapter 4: Art's non-rational uses of the city.- Part II: Software.- Chapter 5: Ideology and the city.- Chapter 6: The body and the city.- Chapter 7: The everyday city.- Chapter 8: Disrupting 'normalcy' through art.- Part III: Networks.- Chapter 9: Networks that create control in the city.- Chapter 10: Foundations for cognitive dissonance.- Chapter 11: Art's intervention in the society of control.- Chapter 12: Epilogue: An ongoing struggle between 'art in the city, the city in art'.