Urban Interventions: Art, Politics and Pedagogy

Abstract

Challenging perspectives on the urban question have arisen in recent years from beyond academic realms through the work of artists and cultural practitioners. Often in dialogue with urban theory and political activism, and employing a range of tactical practices, they have engaged critically with cities and with the spatialities of everyday urban life. They are typically concerned less with representing political issues than with intervening in urban spaces so as to question, refunction and contest prevailing norms and ideologies, and to create new meanings, experiences, understandings, relationships and situations. Such interventionist practices may rarely be seen as part of the traditional purview of urban studies. Yet in asserting their significance here, this essay argues that growing dialogues across and between urban and spatial theory, and artistic and cultural practice, have considerable potential for inspiring and developing critical approaches to cities. The essay highlights a number of specific challenges thrown up by such interconnections that are of political and pedagogical significance and in need of further debate. Copyright (c) 2008 The Author. Journal Compilation (c) 2008 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

The artist can’t escape: The artist as (reluctant) public pedagogue

“…. .there are risks of simplistic celebration or romanticization' (Pinder, 2008;in Schuermans, 2012: 676). However, crucially, artistic interventions seek to create public spaces that have the purpose of asking such questions in the hope of developing spaces for citizens to explore and challenge the characteristics and issues rooted in their place.…”

Artistic Practices and the Redistribution of the Sensible in Largo do Chiado: Attention, Corporeal Isles, Visceral Politics

“…; Belgiojoso ; Doughty & Lagerqvist ). Subsequently, the perception of the potential of art to change urban states of affair has also sparked the interest of planners and urbanists to use arts to intervene in urban space, not only for its economic value, but for its social and atmospheric value (Pinder ; Lehtuvuori ; Belgiojoso ). Some of these studies have pointed out the role of the sensory experience of such practices, (Belgiojoso ; Edensor & Bowdler ; Doughty & Lagerqvist ; Simpson ), but it is still possible to further our understanding of these dynamics.…”

Machinic Assemblages of Publicness

“…Nevertheless, while we may no longer automatically designate public space as an exclusive or privileged space of deliberative citizenship, social learning or urban sociality, these sites often maintain a hold on the public imagination as locales of possibility (Amin, ; Simpson, ; Padawangi, ). Further, even as many contemporary public spaces are said to fail when measured against traditional notions of the ‘truly’ public, novel ways of using and claiming space through practices such as muralling and graffiti (Iveson, ; ), guerrilla and DIY urbanism (Hou, ; Buser et al ., ; Iveson, ), play and creative intervention (Pinder, ; ; Stevens, ), skateboarding (Borden, ), parkour (Mould, ), urban exploration (Garrett, ), and myriad political‐playful movements (Daskalaki and Mould, ) suggest that the nature and concept of publicness is actively caught up in the reimagination and contestation of varied urban spaces. In this article, I follow this line of thinking in which urban public space is understood as ambiguous, never certain and always a site of negotiation and exchange between and amongst human and non‐human entities (Amin, ).…”