Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies

Affiliated Practices and Aesthetic Interventions: Remaking Public Space in Cincinnati and Los Angeles

The work discussed here and the theory that drives it are produced out of the intersection of a social practice of architecture, Marxism/aesthetics discourse, experiments within the context of urban social movements, and a guiding approach that places globalization within the operations of imperialism As background, we accept an analysis of architecture and planning as instruments of domination as we attempt alternative practices (Dutton/Mann, 1996). One element of our work, on which this paper focuses, has been our ongoing interest in how architecture, and aesthetic interventions generally, might be transformed from hegemonic to counterhegemonic in order to realign political forces in the production of culture and social life. In a prior REMARX commentary for Rethinking Marxism we critiqued the concept of “the political” as used in recent architectural discourse. What concerned us was that in all the calls to rethink the political, not one considered the possibility of linking radical aesthetic tactics with progressive political and social movements (Dutton/Mann, 2000). We asserted our dedication to a critical, strategic and affiliated practice of architecture that tries to reorient subjectivities and affirm the oppositional cultures of social movements. Motivated by the will to root political theorizing as well as the practice of art-making within the history of culture and community—not the academy—our desire is to actually make something in the social world. That ending is where we now begin. What social world are we talking about?