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.

SCAPEGOAT architecture/landscape/political economy

James David Morgan wrote this post at 1:21 pm on April 3rd, 2009.

SCAPEGOAT is a tri-annual journal examining the relationship between capitalism and the built environment through connected psychic, social, and ecological registers. It confronts the coercive and violent organization of space, the exploitation of labor and resources, and the unequal distribution of environmental risks and benefits. In each instance, it returns to the politics of making and the political that must be made.

William Holman Hunt "The Scapegoat" (1856)
William Holman Hunt’s The Scapegoat (1856) has nothing to do with the journal in question, beyond its title, which is not eponymous. Image source.

Property and its attendant political economy within architectural, landscape, and urban design will be the focus of the journal’s debut issue, due out in September, 2009. It, and subsequent issues, will be published in Toronto, with unlimited online distribution and a small number of print copies.

The editors hope to include a large number of ongoing works that engage the city as a site of struggle, and so have put out a call for submissions, due June 1, 2009:

Feature Essays (5000-8000 words)
Short Essays (2000-3000 words)
Projects & Proposals (approx. 1000 words + images)
Reviews (1000-2000 words)

SCAPEGOAT attends to both physical manifestations of and cultural and theoretical influences on design. It brings together critical reviews of contemporary practices, historical research and theoretical inquiry. Through architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism, the journal engages mechanisms operating above, below, and behind these disciplines, such as infrastructure, governance, regional planning, land speculation, and militarization.

Submissions should be directed to the SCAPEGOAT editorial board.

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  2. Looking for Art to Benefit Political Prisoner Daniel McGowan


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