Belfast Imaginary: Art and Urban Reinvention
By (Author) Katharine Keenan
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Lexington Books
30th March 2022
United States
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
History of art
704.94994167
Hardback
272
Width 161mm, Height 227mm, Spine 26mm
581g
In Belfast Imaginary: Art and Urban Reinvention, Katherine Keenan argues for the reimagining of place in Belfast, Northern Ireland in the context of Brexit. This deeply researched ethnography depicts the work of artists and policy makers as they imagine and perform a new urban identity for Belfast in the liminal time between the Good Friday Agreement and Brexit.
The Belfast Imaginary provides a timely and important review of how artists, in concert with public officials, have pioneered what she calls third way art in the imagining and construction of a New Belfast. Keenan shows that we can all take heart that a city, so torn by decades of violent conflict, and after years of post-conflict liminality can still imagine itself as a space of creativity and peace. The Belfast Imaginary may very well serve as a blueprint of similar imaginings in places geographically distant but close in spirit to this rapidly evolving global city.
-- Thomas M. Wilson, Binghamton University and State University of New YorkKatharine Keenan is director of Foundation and Corporate Relations at Carthage College.