Top
Is there something compelling that a series of cutting-edge art interventions exploring public space in Johannesburg can tell us about cities, imagination and the public sphere? Kim Gurney reflects upon New Imaginaries to explore the connection: curated through walking and the poetics of migration; via gaming, punk technologies and play; and performance art activating transport lines. The projects link city space to the public sphere to render otherwise illegible urban forms and flows. In so doing, they suggest public space as common space instead, public art towards an art of the commons. This musically inflected book includes a snapshot of recent performance art in central Johannesburg, a silo-breaking chapter on artists and uncertainty and a closing track to place the author in situ. The account ultimately positions itself as a public policy riposte in favour of economic invisibility- that art counts even when it cannot be counted.
