Artistic Topologies: New Social Formations and Political Change in an Emerging Ammani Art World.

As an Ammani café became a popular hangout for artists, artists' social practices were reshaped by the spatial affordances of the café. This paper examines the ways that relationships between artists changed through this spatial rearrangement, exploring the political consequences of those changes. It compares three successive, distinct topologies of social practice within Jordanian art, including a dispersed practice of visitation between artists, a concentrated practice of café sociality, and a third practice spread across an emerging artistic neighborhood. It shows how each spatialization affects power relations within the art scene along lines of class, geography, and gender, and also transforms artistic productivity. Showing how spatial rearrangements transform the political conditions of Amman's art scene, this paper highlights a fluid and contingent urban politics where the stakes of inclusion and action are perpetually changing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]