The Detroit Diary

"I had been reading up on Detroit, the epitome of a shrinking city, where only those - predominantly African-American, almost exclusively poor - were left to suffer the consequences of an ever dwindling tax base and a decaying infrastructure. But when I visited the city in the spring of 2009, the sheer and utter hopeless enormity of the place hit home: How to make art when everything is this fucked up?"
Linking the personal to the political and to issues of art and activism, Hignett’s diary (in text and images) is juxtaposed with writings by three other authors: Aylin Kuryel on 'what art can do', Rob van Kranenburg on 'technology and agency', and Loic Wacquant on 'urban desolation, ethnoracial domination, the penalization of poverty, and the first society of advanced insecurity'.
Nominated for the Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2010. Design:
Anna Haas.
Dutch Art Institute/Werkplaats Typografie