Art/Commons: Anthropology beyond Capitalism

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Art/Commons is the first book to theorise the commons from the perspectives of contemporary art history and anthropology, focusing on the ongoing tensions between art and capitalism. This study is grounded in an analysis of contemporary artistic and curatorial practices, which the author describes as practices of commoning, based on co-production, participation, mutualism and the valorization of reproductive labour. Mollona proposes a novel theoretical approach to current debates on the commons, and shows that art can provide both a language of anti-capitalist and post-colonial critique as well as a distinctive set of skills and practices of commoning.

Reviews

Mollona is our absolutely singular guide through the interwoven fields of critical theory, global activism and contemporary art as it has turned away from capitalist markets and towards hosting new forms of cooperation, care and community. Unlike so many recent texts in art and theory which offer us slogans and platitudes, Mollona's book invites us to think deeply, carefully and with conviction about the commons from a diverse, worldly and intersectional perspective. It demands we recognize the imagination as a common power that can destroy systems of domination and create worlds of solidarity and freedom. * Max Haiven, Associate Professor, Lakehead University *
With intellectual intensity and ethical commitment, Mollona tackles the question of how artistic practices oriented to the common can counter the abstractions of capitalist aesthetics, Moving seamlessly from critical theories of aesthetics and capital to contemporary experiments in art collectivity and communing, Art/commons provides an anti-colonial, antiracist manifesto for an expanded understanding of art as the multiple ways in which creating together cultivates new habits of affect, new relays of energy, and alternative modes of mutual embodiment far removed from the gallery, museum, and cinema. * Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Professor of Anthropology & Gender Studies, Columbia University, USA *
Art/Commons deftly takes Anthropology out of your comfort zone when it foregrounds racial critique in a reflection on what has been named its objects, that is, the Humans, unique capacities, namely productivity (economic) and creativity (aesthetic). It is a must read for anyone interested in exploring the ethico-political possibilities that open when art guides the critique of capital. * Denise Ferreira da Silva, philosopher, visual and relational artist, and the author of Toward a Global Idea of Race *

Author Bio

Massimiliano Mollona is a writer, filmmaker and anthropologist with a multidisciplinary background in economics and anthropology. Mollona has been the director of the Athens Biennale (2015-17), one of the artistic directors of the Bergen Assembly (2017); co-founder of the Laboratory for the Urban Commons (LUC) based in Athens and the initiator of the ongoing project Institute of Radical Imagination (IRI). He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.