Introducing – Pil and Galia Kollectiv, one sixth of Mute's ensemble music column covering sonic adventures across genres and time. Email: info AT kollectiv.co.uk
No Room to Move: Radical Art and the Regenerate City A fistful of research on the state of critical public art in the maelstrom of New Labour's regeneration programmes. By Josephine Berry Slater and Anthony Iles
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Submitted by mute on Monday, 21 December, 2009 - 21:50
Hari Kunzru, Benedict Seymour, and Laura Oldfield Ford
Rarely has early 21st century existence felt as epic, as fictional, as it did in September 2008 when the Lehman collapse triggered an avalanche of ficticious value destruction and often dystopian speculation over the future. As is typical with such Events, all threads which previously seemed disconnected start to weave together into a single fabric, or in this case perhaps rope is more apt - one which mankind seemed to be winding round its neck. The switchback from the pomposity and vigour of boom to the economic, cultural and energy void of bust was dizzying, captivating, addictive. Why fight the urge towards headlong speculation over our future, when the future seemed to be moving towards us like a breaking wave, leaving certainties upended in its wake? Mute has embraced the momentum, and commissioned a series of short fictional pieces over the post-crunch future. Half wincing, half swaggering in their exploration of imminent techno-capitalist realities, this issue's crop by writers - Hari Kunzru, Laura Oldfield Ford and Benedict Seymour - seem to generate sick scenarios of control, destruction and decadence quite effortlessly out of the present. All reinforce the feeling that our current version of ‘normality' is running out of road...
Far removed from the clichéd image of the ‘ivory tower’, today’s universities have been opened to the harsh realities of neoliberal economics. In the name of democratisation and equality, the university has become a cross between a supermarket and a factory whose consumers are also its hyper-exploited labour force. But the conditions of mass intellectuality also create new potentials and alliances
In any case the picture is really surprising.
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