From Francis Alys and Ursula Biemann to Vivan Sundaram, Allora & Calzadilla, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy, some of the most compelling artists today are engaging with the politics of land use. This book brings together a range of international voices and artworks to illuminate this critical mass of practices.
"This is the book I've been waiting for. Scott and Swenson bring together a vast variety of projects from all over the globe, providing a rigorous and sometimes brilliant examination of the social spaces into which artists have been inserting themselves for decades now. Departing from conventional landscapes and documentary approaches, informed by feminism and grassroots and global movements, authors and artists are opening the floodgates to a still broader context for art." -Lucy R. Lippard, author of Undermining: A Wild Ride through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West
"Scott and Swenson's trenchant collection of essays will be indispensable for theorists of land use, critical urbanism, and contemporary art. It is itself a monument in the beleaguered landscape of our age." -Caroline A. Jones, Professor of History, Theory, and Criticism, MIT, and editor of Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art
"Though in radically different ways, these authors contest the common treatment of land as neutral or a given-as if all that matters is what happens on top of it. For some the project is to make land visible, and for others it is to capture what is present even if invisible. They move against erasure or the generic. They trace and mark differences." -Saskia Sassen, author of Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy
“… a diverse, eye-opening collection of essays and artworks…. Scott and Swenson offer a journey through the various creative ways that writers and artists are applying their crafts to challenge conventional visions of land and space.”
