Dedicated to critical cultural production at the intersection of art and activism.

We cover artists from around the globe whose work explores and realizes social change. Our goal is to provide a narrative about these activist efforts while simultaneously participating in them. Maintained by The Groundswell Collective since 2007.

City from Below: Resisting Gentrification in the Creative City

James David Morgan wrote this post at 12:39 pm on April 2nd, 2009.

Resisting Gentrification in the Creative City

Stevphen Shukaitis, Beka Economopoulos, Christine Ulke, Alan Moore, and Adrian Blackwell teamed up on this City from Below panel to discuss the history of social movements’ creative potential, its exploitation and cooption by capital, and the reclamation of integrity.

To frame the discussion, Stevphen describes the city as a site where our creativity is frequently turned against ourselves, wherein urban planners have adopted Richard Florida’s creative class lens, and now look to artists and other creatives as a vanguard to exploit for capitalist development.  In turn, other panelists describe the forms and sites of both successful and failed resistance, from Williamsburg hipsters to architecture in Toronto.

Listen in English:

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Or in Spanish:

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Related posts:

  1. Command-C: Urban Computing Against Gentrification
  2. Signs of Revolt – Creative Resistance and Social Movements since Seattle
  3. Porous City: Krzysztof Wodiczko at MIT
  4. Seeding the City


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Discuss (1)

this is nice. For the nation to advance, there really is a need to use history as a point of reference.