Call for papers for an edited anthology of individual essays about art and gentrification- working title:

“Art and Gentrification: Urban Aesthetics in the Changing Neoliberal Landscape.”

Gentrification arguably forms a key component of neoliberal urban growth strategies inspired by the so-called promises of the creative city. Its hegemonic effects on the urban sensorium have an essential role in producing and reinforcing socio-spatial divides. Such social dynamics include the cultural dimension of the ‘urban imagery’ often explained with the concepts of “representation of space” and “conceived space” following the writings of Henri Lefebvre.

Since the 1980s, the controversial phenomenon of the art and artists’ role in gentrification has been at the forefront of the urban geography research in the subjects of housing, regeneration, displacement, and new urban planning. In these accounts, the artists have been historically noted to contribute at all stages of gentrification, from triggering it to ultimately being displaced themselves. Hence, particularly lacking are accounts of artists as agents of resistance against gentrification.

The current presence of art in the urban space illustrates the constant negotiation between power and resistance and there is a growing need to recognize art’s multiple, conflicting and uneven relationship with gentrification and displacement. In tandem with the neoliberal critique, there are compelling intellectual, social as well as artistic movements to reclaim equal access to urban space and resources for all urban inhabitants. Regarding gentrification as a continuing process of the neoliberal urban planning, this book brings together current debates in art history, visual studies, philosophy, geography, sociology, and urban studies to explore art’s changing role in the socio-economic context of the neoliberal urbanism. It analyses how art captures and, in some instances, subverts the experience of the gentrified urban space, reveals the hegemonic and counterhegemonic interactions among city authorities, urban developers, and activists and empowers the communities in the gentrified neighborhoods.

This book acknowledges the accumulated discussions on art’s role in gentrification but changes the focus to the growing phenomenon of cultural and artistic protests and resistance in the gentrified neighborhoods. Thus, it aims to point to the aestheticization of the urban space as a resource for neoliberal urbanism but also as a resistance of the alternative political culture that channels the subjective dynamics into political participation and empowerment.

Cross-disciplinary proposals that engage in artistic practices through their investment in utilizing urban spaces as a part of gentrification processes and/or anti-gentrification resistance are welcome.

The papers may address but are not restricted to the following questions and themes:
- How does art respond uniquely to gentrification?
- How do we understand the political significance of a variety of urban creativity in surveilled, designed and otherwise controlled urban contexts?
- How do public artistic expressions reveal, delimit or question the complexity of neoliberal urbanization?
- What kind of political and aesthetic possibilities could emerge in the intersection of the spatial and dialogical premises of art and the ideological and economic premise of the new urban planning?
- How are our perceptual and sensual encounters with the city’s changing landscape shaped by art?
- What kind of visual analysis method could be applied to discuss the visual impact of the commercial, artistic, political visual language of the gentrified neighborhoods?
- How are our perceptual and sensual encounters with the city’s changing landscape shaped by art?
- In which ways art and art theory can relate to counter-hegemonic epistemologies of the urban space?
- Who should protect public art (such as community murals) in the face of gentrification?
- The role of art institutions in gentrification
- The aesthetics and politics of neoliberal urbanism
- Speculations in real estate and art
- Art’s role in urban regeneration beyond the ‘creative city’ discourses
- Public art commissions and gentrification
- Gentrification and the new visual colonialism
- ‘Art washing’ and art galleries
- Theoretical perspectives on art, gentrification, and displacement
- Artistic hacking of the gentrified urban space
- Alternative voices, visualities, and performances towards gentrification
- Visual dissent and the creation of new ways of everyday living in the city
- Aesthetics of the anti-gentrification resistance and urban commons
- Visual activism and sensory experience in the urban space
- Emancipatory urban art practices and ‘the right to the city’ discourse
- Aesthetical thinking, feeling, and acting in the city
- Community art spaces and neighborhood gentrification resistance
- Critical aesthetic interventions that facilitate citizen engagement
- Space, symbols, and dissent in the city
- Urban art and spatial justice
- Irregular visual occupation of the urban space

Please submit abstracts of around 500 words together with details of your affiliation and current CV to Tijen Tunali tijentunali9gmail.com until Friday, April 19, 2019, using ‘CFP: art and gentrification’ as the subject heading of your email.