| dc.description.abstract | This book is an interdisciplinary exploration of the different ways in
which marginal urban spaces have become privileged locations for
creativity in Latin America. At the most basic level creativity can be
defined as the ability to produce the new. In this way, the essays within the
collection engage with new art forms, political organisations and subjectivities
emerging from within a range of Latin American urban spaces which can, in
different ways, be regarded as peripheral or marginal. In addition, the essays
the volume contains seek to understand the ways in which artists, architects
and urban planners from outside such spaces have sought to harness this
creativity in their own representations of, and interventions in, marginal
locations. In line with the work of Henri Lefebvre, then, within the collection
space is understood not only as the setting where creative processes unfold,
but also as a dynamic part of those very processes, as well as its continuously
changing outcome.1
We do not intend to imply, however, that creativity is the
only process at work within marginalised urban spaces, nor that such spaces
represent some kind of romanticised ideal of the creative potential within Latin
American cities: we are well aware that cities throughout the region, and their
inhabitants, face continuous and extremely urgent problems. On the contrary,
the book explores the intersection of problems and complexities that lead to,
or arise from, the production of the new, with a focus on the ways in which
this production reveals, manifests and challenges existing tensions in Latin
American space, culture and society. | |
