Reading urban cracks: practices of artists and community workers

Abstract

This book questions the why and how of setting up artistic and social practices in interstitial spaces in the city, urban cracks. Urban cracks are conceptualised as in-between time spaces, characterised by an apparent void, where different logics meet and conflict. The lamination of different historically grown layers of meaning and the crossing of conflicting logics in these 'useless' places, are highlighted as significant features which artists and community workers could act upon. The authors discuss the potential of localized artistic and social practices that work with the context of urban cracks, and therefore bring forth significant political meanings. Artists and community workers are both engaged in reading, analysing and translating pertinent developments of society, although their intentions and outcomes are fairly different. This book is the result of a two-year interdisciplinary research project of the University College Ghent: a collaboration between the School of Arts and the Faculty of Education, Health and Social Work