From margins to capital: The integration of spaces of artistic critique within capitalist urbanism

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to understand how the attitude of urban actors has changed with respect to artistic temporary use of spaces, considered here as spaces for the expression of artistic critique. I will analyze the dynamics of integrating spaces of artistic critique into city production by looking at their history in Paris, their gradual acknowledgment by institutions and, more recently, their instrumentalization. In this article, I show how capitalist urbanization has endogenized artistic critique and spaces of artistic critique and how this contributes to undermine the critique of capitalist urbanization through its integration into urban planning, its harnessing and misdirecting the ethical values of independence, authenticity, and freedom, and its support of spaces for expressing this critique. The new spirit of capitalist urbanization integrates critique to justify engagement in and to inspire actors to pursue capital accumulation, in other words, making a profit off the land. Focusing on the Parisian case and drawing on research carried out over the past 20 years, this article seeks to illuminate these ways of instrumentalizing and integrating artistic critique in view of multiple contemporary changes, in particular the injunction to an entrepreneurial self. To understand this trend, this article draws from two theoretical fields—urban studies and the sociology of art—offering a new perspective on the interface between critical artistic practices and urban spaces.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This does not mean that every cultural policy or venue plays this double bind game. Even if they contribute to the enforcement of cultural norms, many are resistant spaces of social inclusion and solidarity such as public libraries that act as safe spaces for vulnerable populations (Aptekar, 2019).

2. The “prospective city” is the concept formulated by Boltanski and Chiapello to describe the norms and values of the new spirit of capitalism (Boltanski & Chiapello, 1999).

3. This paper aims to draw a theoretical pattern based on my previous research. Since the early 2000s, I have conducted several cases studies on temporary uses of spaces and large cultural projects. These are based on qualitative methods: archives analyses, media representation, interviews with stakeholders (especially real estate developers, city officials, artists and spaces managers). I also studied the rise of entrepreneurial self among young graduates. This paper benefits also from several researches conducted with master and PhD students. I wish to thank especially Anna Aubry, Alexandre Blein, Manon Dumont, Yoann Peres, Juliette Pinard.

4. As explained later, this romantic image should not hide the entrepreneurial ethos some artists may deploy to succeed.

5. Even though, since the early 2000s, the Berlin authorities have implemented a procedure to support the temporary use of spaces for the purpose of promoting the city.

6. The creation of the 104, a public cultural institution of the City of Paris, explicitly drew inspiration from these experiences.

7. Similar claims for workspaces for artists in the gentrification era have been identified in the analysis of Toronto newspapers (Bain & March, 2019).

8. The emergence of strategic squatters has not replaced radical and politicized squatter movements, which are more discreet and receive less media attention. The endogenization of critique does not wipe it but makes it less audible especially when it express through illegal migrants encampments.

9. This professionalization often takes place through hiring staff to manage and maintain the site.

10. Some contemporary artists explicitly think of themselves as entrepreneurs specifically seeking profit.

11. Since the 2003 laws on philanthropy and the 2008 law creating endowments thru tax incentives.

12. The endogenization of artistic critique of urban planning by urban planning can also be found in the new forms of interrelation between local authorities and real estate companies in the form of calls for so-called “innovative” projects, such as Réinventez Paris [Reinvent Paris], in which certain operators of spaces of artistic critique are participating.

13. One of them is also a freelance journalist writing about these spaces. Yet, as Bain and March emphasis, “journalists have the power to mediate between urban actors to set agenda for urban growth” (Bain & March, 2019, p. 179). The multipositionality of these new professionals should raise concerns about the potential for conflicts of interest.

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Notes on contributors

Elsa Vivant

Elsa Vivant is an assistant professor in urban studies. Her initial research concerns the relationship between the worlds of art and urban planning. She highlights how alternative cultural places have been progressively integrated into the dominant logics of urban production. Recently, she has been an artist in residence at the Ateliers Medicis, a new cultural venue in Paris suburbs. She has launched a new research project on the responses to the opioid crisis in the United States, in particular the ways in which conflicts over the use of public space are managed, the evolution of police practices and the controversies regarding the creation of safe consumption spaces.