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In the context of debates on place, space, and identity in a period of globalisation, this article asks whether collaborative arts projects are a means to identity formation for participants. This is of interest, not least, because such projects are outside consumption, the latter more often discussed in work on identity in sociology. Situated perhaps between the arts and the development work of NGOs, such projects also imply a viable, democratic public sphere distinct from a public realm constituted conventionally by urban public spaces or marked by public art. From two contrasting projects within the programme "Capital do Nada" in Marvila, a social housing district of Lisbon, in 2001, the article argues that as well as contributing to identity formation they have a capacity to evoke the imagination of new social formations. It contextualises the projects, describes them, and argues that they challenge received notions of identity formation based in consumption. Then, referencing Habermas and Fraser's critique of Habermas, and the performative in Arendt and Sennett, the article ends with broader speculation on the relevance of such art work for social theory. (Contains 1 figure.)

When political change is remote the only prospect for change is in the realm of imagination. Herbert Marcuse responds to this in his last book, The Aesthetic Dimension (1978) after the failure of revolt in Paris in 1968. He argues that although art cannot change the world as such it can change how the world is apprehended. Thus art's imaginative potential is part of a wider pursuit of freedom. The paper argues that the situation is bleaker today than in the 1970s. Neoliberalism enforces a regime of consumerism even more now than then, and operates globally. Still, hope reappears in direct action from the anti-roads campaigns of the 1990s to anti-capitalism in the 2000s and Occupy in 2011-12 (after a much longer history of direct action). Today's direct action and campaigning is specific, however, in addressing the trajectory of global capital. It also accepts its own ephemerality--leading Occupy to reject the processes of representation and issue no programme, instead inviting people to be present among others of like mind in the effective creation of a new society within the old. The paper asks to what extent art remains part of this picture of radical alterity, and whether Marcuse's critical aesthetics remain helpful. Among issues raised are Marcuse's Enlightenment view of art as autonomous creativity (rather than contingent on production within an art-world); a blurring of the divide between art institutions and the cultures of protest, as in the exhibition Disobedient Objects in London in 2014; and that appropriation may be art's perpetual burden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an essay on French literature in the period of Nazi occupation, Herbert Marcuse argues that a literature of intimacy -- love poems and romantic novels -- is the last resort of freedom in totalitarian conditions. Written in 1945 and revised in the 1970s, Marcuse's essay argues that in the face of totalitarianism, a literature of intimacy opens a realm of human experience that is outside the control of the regime. Because it carries a memory of joy, it is radically other to the ethos of the regime. Later, in The Aesthetic Dimension (1978), Marcuse returns to the role of aesthetics when political change is unlikely to occur. The article revisits Marcuse's 1945 essay and his reading of the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and Paul Eluard. It begins by relating Marcuse's interest in love poetry to the work of other critical theorists who see a radical role for aesthetics and the pursuit of happiness in periods when political change is blocked. It examines the 1945 essay, puts it in context of Marcuse's work for the US intelligence services in the 1940s, and looks at the similarities between the 1945 essay and Marcuse's later writing. Finally, it asks whether Marcuse's arguments matter today (as the dreams for which the New Left of the 1960s went in search appear as remote as ever). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A work by Freee Art Collective states that protest drives history. Another proclaims that protest is beautiful. The paper considers these projects - as provocative rather than literal readings of history - in light of modern histories of revolt, recurrent resurgences of an interruptive politics (most recently in Occupy), and critiques of modernist art. It suggests that, although protest does not really drive history, nonetheless an art that protests also interrupts and fractures the status quo (which, today, entails the assertion that there is no alternative to neoliberalism). In the crack, as it were, a reimagination of the world is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the authors discuss various articles within the issue on topics including the cultural politics of utopia and dystopia, interactions between the dystopia and contemporary Chinese dream in the novel "The Fat Years," and the utopian globalist art hsitory.

In this short paper I question the validity of aligning new public spaces with the idea of a public sphere of democratic determination. I suggest that the current emphasis on public spaces in urban development schemes is nostalgic, repeats the ungrounded advocacy associated with culturally-led urban redevelopment, and masks a widening democratic deficit. Looking to geographical writing on space as a realm of boundaries and exclusions, I ask whether insights from this can be applied to the problem of what constitutes a democratic public sphere (if one exists). I conclude that occupations of urban spaces constitute a proto-public sphere but are necessarily ephemeral. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between the 1990s and the financial services crisis of 2008, new public spaces were regularly included in urban redevelopment schemes in the United Kingdom (and elsewhere). Following the report of the Urban Task Force, and the invention of the new category of social exclusion, new public spaces were seen as producing social cohesion. Like public art in the 1980s and 1990s, new public spaces represented a cosmetic approach to a range of deeper-rooted urban ills, but were a low-budget, highly visible alternative to dealing with problems of infrastructure and wealth distribution. This article asks what issues emerge from an investigation of new public spaces, what histories are co-opted by their advocacy, and whether public spaces have ever housed a public sphere of social self-determination. It asks whether a proto-public sphere is found in the coffee houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and whether or not the idea of a public sphere is reflected in Millennium Place, Coventry, a new public space that is the site of a participatory art project by Jochen Gerz: The Public Bench. All this is put into focus by reference to the worldwide appearance of Occupy in 2011, which might have been an ephemeral public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is the form of the public monument viable today? A proliferation of monuments and memorials in Europe from the 1870s onwards articulated national identities for states of which many were either recently established or in decline. Representation of the nation was a unifying device. Today, the statues raised in past centuries fade into the urban landscape while a world of global capital and economic migration, in which cities compete globally regardless of the national territories in which they are situated, renders the idea of belonging fluid, and that of national identity perhaps defunct. A question arises as to whether the form of the monument (as a class of objects) retains currency, or can be democratised for a society of diverse publics and conflicting interests. This paper takes Antony Gormley's project for the vacant plinth in Trafalgar Square, London in the summer of 2009-One & Other-as a case by which to investigate the viability of the monument today. After describing the project and its performative character, I draw on three connected frameworks: the monument as representation; constructions of national identity; and the expediency of culture in masking social divisions. I cite Matthew Arnold's claim that culture is a defence against anarchy (his term for social breakdown), and link this to nineteenth-century reformism. This leads me to ask whether a reformist ethos still applies, and whether there are parallels between such cultural strategies and public art as a renewal of the monument in a period of widening social divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The division between art and political activism becomes increasingly blurred when artists' groups develop ways of working which draw on the tactics of campaigning groups. This follows a collapsing of the boundaries between art, architecture, design, fashion and communications media through the past two decades. But while the arts have merged into the creative industries, art activism emerges now as a dissident practice. The article begins by noting two contemporary artists' groups - in the UK and Argentina - for whom art offers a means of politicised intervention. It then examines various critical positions on such art and its relation to diverse publics and questions the viability of recent arguments for relational aesthetics in the face of current political emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks how social change occurs when political revolution is not a real possibility. It addresses this in a critical reconsideration of the concept of intentionality, and its relation to instrumentality. The revolutionary agency of avant-gardes and parties is questioned on the grounds that a conventional view of revolution is instrumentalist and thereby flawed — regardless of the tactics used in specific cases. The issue is further addressed by contrasting conventional (intentional) utopianism with millenarianism, to suggest a possible immanent revolution within (while transforming) everyday life. Henri Lefebvre is cited here, to effect that moments of presence (or sudden clarity) occur in everyday life, despite and re-framing the dulling routines of capitalism. The article further questions the idea of intentionality by reference to Michael Baxandall's critique of it in modern art — for example in analysis of a painting by Picasso. There is no conclusion in the sense of a solution to the problem, but the real possibility of immanent revolt is seen as the most utopian possibility today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Matt Rogalsky and Laura Cameron on David Tudor's performed sculptural sound installation "Rainforest IV," and another by Peter Kraftl on the metaphorical configuring of a building as 'performed art.'

The article reconsiders the mud-brick architecture of Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy (1900-1989), looking particularly at his two major (but, for different reasons, incomplete) projects for settlements at New Gourna (1945-1949), across the Nile from Luxor, and at New Baris (1965-1967), in the Kharga Oasis (or New Valley). This reconsideration is timely in two contexts: first, current interest in sustainable architecture and the potential of mud brick as a low-cost (or, as Fathy put it, a no-cost) solution for the housing needs of nonaffluent countries and, second, reflections from a position in postmodernity on modernism and the possibility that there are alternative modernisms besides the international modernism specific to Europe and North America. This leads to debates around modernism and tradition, and Fathy occupies a complex position in this regard. But his work also raises questions as to the production of space, not least in a fusion of design and building, and the handing over to local masons of key aspects of both. The key question, however, in which both of the above aspects figure, is whether Fathy's work, particularly his efforts to create whole settlements, constructs a traditional (and nationalist) alternative to modernism or (still as nationalism) an alternative modernism incorporating aspects of European modernism and articulating them in new ways. The question has wide implications for visual culture--art and design as well as architecture--as well as being a means to read Fathy's work within postcolonial and postmodern frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on author Herbert Marcuse's lecture "The End of Utopia," which he presented in Berlin, Germany, in 1967. In his lecture Marcuse describes society as a work of art. Marcuse argued in Berlin that Utopia has ended because it was a real-possibility and was no longer a dream. According to the author, Marcuse did not said anything on how the utopian dream which is a real-possibility is to be taken up by a mass public.

Discusses several art projects which compared ways in which the values of artists' interventions in urban social settings can be measured. Evaluation processes used for the Window Sills research projects, initiated by staff from the School of Art and Design of the University of Plymouth; Objectives of the Civic Participation Workshops in Barcelona, Spain; Information on the Visions of Utopia Festival coordinated in England.

Discusses the viability of avant-garde in art, in terms of theoretical and critical writing on avant-gardes in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Summary of ideas of what constitutes an avant-garde; Description of avant-gardes in European and North American art histories; Difficulty in the concept of social transformation inherited from a modernity.

Examines the creation of a wetland at Quaking Houses, County Durham in England, and an artist's residency at Skinningrove on the Cleveland coast from March 2000. Polarization of the terms local and global; Formation of the Quaking Houses Environment Trust; Role of art in environmentalism.

Presents several photographs of pigeon huts and gardens along the shoreline at Skinningrove.

Contemporary visual art practice includes a strand of ecological and environmentalist work, developed independently in Europe and the USA, one aspect of which is the development of practical solutions to industrial pollution, another the use of shock tactics to draw attention to the green agenda and the underlying contradictions of capitalism which produce environmental destruction. Amongst artists in this field are Mel Chin (USA) and the London based group PLATFORM. The essay looks at aspects of their work, and argues that the viral like approach of which both Chin and PLATFORM write offers a realizable prospect for radical social change - change in which art has the role of agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces a series of articles on the relationship of art with urbanism.

Examines the possibilities for an art of urban engagement in the case of the Nine Mile Run Greenway project in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Factors which affect urban development in the 21st century; Factors affecting the function of the state of maintaining an equilibrium between the growth rates of productivity and consumption; Description of the Nine Mile Run Greenway project; Role of art in the post-industrial city.

The article reviews several public art projects including "90% Crude" by the artist group Platform, "Natural Reality" curated by Heike Strelow at Ludwig Forum in Aachen, Germany, and "Terra Nova" by Hermann Prigann.

The article discusses ecological art projects in Great Britain. Details are included about ecological art, which aims to assist in cleaning up the earth and provide a sustainable future. Projects discussed include the cleansing of polluted water sources by artist Helen Smith, proposals for an ecological domain created by Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, and the exposure of the market economy as a driving force of environmental destruction by Shelley Sacks. The article also discusses a project to clean polluted water sources in northeast England called "The Seen and the Unseen," created by residents of Quaking Houses, England, researchers at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, and others.