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This paper offers the framework of an agonistic politics of invitation to nuance the political implications of contextually- and temporally-specific cultural policy invites that bring to light a range of conflicts. Invitations are conceptualized with respect to their rationale, form, role expectations, and responses in three empirical vignettes: (1) the collectivized articulation of Berlin’s trans-disciplinary Koalition der Freien Szene as future invitee in local cultural governance; (2) the counter-invitation formulated by New York City’s People’s Cultural Plan to tackle ongoing racial inequities in the municipal Cultural Plan; and (3) uninvited graffiti responses to Vancouver’s Chinatown public art call to reconcile century-long discrimination against Chinese Canadians. The paper argues that invitations crucially shape and condition future spaces of possibilities for collaborative urban cultural governance.

The relation between politics, ontology, and space remains one of the most contested concerns in human geography, often leading to a dismissal of ontology in favor of the politicization of space. In contrast, this article mobilizes post-foundationalism to propose a political ontology of space. After reviewing geographers’ engagements with politics, post-politics and the political, the article demonstrates how a post-foundational geography radically uproots geographic understandings of political and socio-spatial realities. Grounded upon parameters of negativity, contingency, and antagonism, the article equips geographers to grapple with the crumbling foundations of an uncertain present, and unknown futures.

The article unpacks the multiple political implications of commissioned murals in contested urban space. It examines public artwork in Hogan’s Alley, a historically Black neighborhood in Vancouver, BC, situated on the unceded Indigenous territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Coast Salish Nations. Drawing from ethnographic field research and semi-structured interviews with local artists, policymakers and community activists, I read the mural Remember Hogan’s Alleny (2019), covering the sidewall of a subsidized housing project, as a contested public space. In this conflictual space, multiple pasts appear, disappear and reappear, oscillating between the celebration of Black culture, food and entertainment and the systematic displacement of Black residents and businesses. By contrasting diverging rationales, expectations and dreams regarding murals’ contributions to memory-making and cultural reconciliation, I trace where and how conflicts about public art inscribe themselves into the urban cultural fabric. The article intervenes into the predominantly ‘positive’ discussion of sanctioned public art to develop a more conflict-attuned understanding of artworks placed in the public realm. It deploys a framework of hauntology to discuss the appearance of ghosts invited into the public realm via official art commissions. These ghosts, becoming visible on urban walls via acts of placemaking, conjure memories of spatial displacement and racial discrimination, as well as stories of community care and healing. In sum, the article argues that the analytic of ghosts assists to foster an understanding of public art as always-already conflictual, thus inviting to stay with conflicts of belonging and memory, rather than to suppress them or shy away. By reflecting on what public art does politically – unpacking diverse narratives of the past that continue to mark present racial inequalities – the article contributes to sketching a conflict-oriented understanding of public space that is needed in cities wounded by racism and displacement.

Digitalisierung und Digitalität stellen die Kulturpolitik vor zahlreiche grundlegende Herausforderungen. Auf einer pragmatischen Handlungsebene besteht weitreichender Konsens über die großen Baustellen der Digitalisierung des Kultursektors – beispielsweise die Notwendigkeit des Ausbaus digitaler Infrastrukturen für den Kulturbereich, die Ausbildung entsprechender Kompetenzen bei Kulturakteuren und den Ausbau digitaler Kulturvermittlungsbemühungen. Jenseits der praktischen Anwendungsebene zeichnen sich jedoch weitere Aufgaben ab: So müssen für das Zeitalter der Digitalität neue Modi und Prinzipien der Kulturproduktion und -nutzung erprobt und etabliert werden. Den negativen Auswirkungen der neuen Technologien müssen Ansätze entgegengesetzt werden, damit die Kultur als gesellschaftliche Ressource zugänglich und verfügbar bleibt. Dieser Beitrag versucht, zentrale Aspekte dieser kulturpolitisch-digitalen Entwicklung überblicksartig darzustellen.