Short description:

Can art or architecture change the world? Is it possible to think of a new cultural avant-garde today? This book contributes to the debate by looking back to past avant-gardes and by profiling contemporary cases of radical cultural practices.

Long description:

Urban Avant-Gardes presents original research on a range of recent contemporary practices in and between art and architecture giving perspectives from a wide range of disciplines in the arts, humanities and social sciences that are seldom juxtaposed, it questions many assumptions and accepted positions.

This book looks back to past avant-gardes from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries examining the theoretical and critical terrain around avant-garde cultural interventions, and profiles a range of contemporary cases of radical cultural practices. The author brings together material from a wide range of disciplines to argue for cultural intervention as a means to radical change, while recognizing that most such efforts in the past have not delivered the dreams of their perpetrators.

Distinctive in that it places works of the imagination in the political and cultural context of environmentalism, this book asks how cultural work might contribute to radical social change. It is equally concerned with theory and practice - part one providing a theoretical framework and part two illustrating such frameworks with examples.

Table of Contents:

1. 1871: Spitting on Napoleon 2. 1912: Red Flags and Revolutionary Anthems 3. 1938: Graffiti at Cap-Martin 4. 1967: The End of Utopia 5. 1989: After the Wall 6. 1993 (i): In Memories of Dark Times 7. 1993 (ii): Participation and Provocation 8. 2001 (i): Sustainabilities 9. 2001 (ii): Cosmopolis