Off the Grid Art Practices and Public Space

Spurred by a new wave of protests across the globe – from Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the Arab Spring, and sundry street marches against neoliberal governments throughout Latin America – Raussert examines how artistic practices in three periods (1920s-30s, 1960s-70s and the new millennium) in the Americas have challenged the control of public space in relation to gender, race, sexuality, class, age. The Inter-American perspective sheds light on common utopian aspirations across time and place, as in the networked movements of indigenous, Afro-descendants and diasporic groups, epitomized by the Zapatista lemma: “So long as the media keep lying, the walls will keep talking.” Indeed, this important must-read book, shows how contestatory artists subvert the increasing privatization, consumerization and electronic monitoring of public space and its virtualization in new media, in our own period.
George Yúdice,
Professor of Latin American Studies, and of Modern Languages and Literatures
at the University of Miami, USA