Author Description

Empires Ruins and Networks examines the role of art and the artist in a globalised world where city wars are fought in the form of competition for cultural tourism and where cultural differences have been commodified. Authors and artists from across the Southern Hemisphere, from Africa and Australia to South America, and from Europe and Scandinavia, explore alternative imaginary and real places outside capitalism--in wastelands and failed urban developments--where unexpected forms of energy and resistance are emerging. Maps, photographs and video become powerful tools for confronting oppression and transforming a pessimism of the will into active responsibility.In a world of dispossessed indigenous peoples, refugees and exiles, can one re-invent the home by transcending its previous limits? The contributors to this book discover new forms of social relationships and collaborative critical artistic practice in the intersection of the global and the local to counter the extension of commodity production into the interstices of contemporary life.