This issue of Making and Breaking sets out to re-imagine culture beyond individualised consumerism and personal preferences indexed to the ability to pay. Kirsten Ross recovered the idea of Communal Luxury from the shattered remains of the Paris Commune. It evoked not just collective consumption (of services or infrastructures) but the possibility of a social fabric charged with aesthetic experience, with art and beauty for the many, not for the few. Demonised and ridiculed after 1990, when creative entrepreneurship and startup culture triumphed over the supposedly grey conformity of the public sector, what happened to collective popular culture? If we are to establish art and culture as something essential to democratic citizenship and human flourishing, then we have to take the risk of re-imagining the possibilities of collective culture.With contributions by Mark Fisher, Kate Oakley, Gregory Sholette, Emma Webb, Collettivo Sentiero Futuro Autoproduzioni, The Radical Film Network, Letizia Chiappini, Andreas Krüger and Dan Hill.
Making & Breaking is an online journal published (bi)annually by the Autonomy research chair of Avans University’s Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology (Caradt). Its aim is to provide a platform for critical discussion on issues concerning the relationship between cultural production and social change.
