Evictions

Art and Spatial Politics

Author  Rosalyn Deutsche
Evictions

Since the 1980s a great deal has been written on the relationship between art, architecture, and urban planning and design, on the one hand, and the politics of space on the other. In Evictions Rosalyn Deutsche investigates—and protests against—the dominant uses of this interdisciplinary discourse. Deutsche argues that critics on both the left and the right invoke harmonious images of space that conceal and justify exclusions—whether the space in question is a city, park, institution, exhibition, identity, or work of art. By contrast, she calls for a democratic spatial critique that takes account of the conflicts that produce and maintain all spaces, including the space of politics itself. Evictions examines how aesthetic and urban ideologies were combined during the last…