Critical Landscapes Art, Space, Politics

From Francis Alys and Ursula Biemann to Vivan Sundaram, Allora & Calzadilla, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy, some of the most compelling artists today are engaging with the politics of land use. This book brings together a range of international voices and artworks to illuminate this critical mass of practices.

“This is the book I’ve been waiting for. Scott and Swenson bring together a vast variety of projects from all over the globe, providing a rigorous and sometimes brilliant examination of the social spaces into which artists have been inserting themselves for decades now. Departing from conventional landscapes and documentary approaches, informed by feminism and grassroots and global movements, authors and artists are opening the floodgates to a still broader context for art.” —Lucy R. Lippard, author of Undermining: A Wild Ride through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West

"Scott and Swenson’s trenchant collection of essays will be indispensable for theorists of land use, critical urbanism, and contemporary art. It is itself a monument in the beleaguered landscape of our age." —Caroline A. Jones, Professor of History, Theory, and Criticism, MIT, and editor of Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art

"Though in radically different ways, these authors contest the common treatment of land as neutral or a given—as if all that matters is what happens on top of it. For some the project is to make land visible, and for others it is to capture what is present even if invisible. They move against erasure or the generic. They trace and mark differences." —Saskia Sassen, author of Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy

From Francis Alys and Ursula Biemann to Vivan Sundaram, Allora & Calzadilla, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy, some of the most compelling artists today are engaging with the politics of land use, including the growth of the global economy, climate change, sustainability, Occupy movements, and the privatization of public space. Their work pivots around a set of evolving questions: In what ways is land, formed over the course of geological time, also contemporary and formed by the conditions of the present? How might art contribute to the expansion of spatial and environmental justice? Editors Emily Eliza Scott and Kirsten Swenson bring together a range of international voices and artworks to illuminate this critical mass of practices. One of the first comprehensive treatments of land use in contemporary art, Critical Landscapes skillfully surveys the stakes and concerns of recent land-based practices, outlining the art historical contexts, methodological strategies, and geopolitical phenomena. This cross-disciplinary collection is destined to be an essential reference not only within the fields of art and art history, but also across those of cultural geography, architecture and urban planning, environmental history, and landscape studies.