New Communities

The present popularity of “communities” in art and theory is corresponding to the failure of the great narratives of community in society since 1989 and the “high-time” of globalization in the 1990s. In this book researchers, artists, and curators shed light on how we position ourselves as individuals in a society where global migration is provoking unprecedented structural change; how to conceive of communal spaces; and to what extent communities influence the quality of the public sphere. New concepts of community in art and theory replace unitary and essentialist models based on presence, identification and immanence. The essays in this publication are exploring the emergence of temporary and experimental new communities in art and society that refuse to function as an easily manipulated mass united by a common identity. Instead, the radical re-conceptualizations of “community” imply the potential of collective resistance.
New Communities documents and expands upon the international symposium “We, Ourselves and Us,” which took place in Toronto, Canada, in January 2009. The symposium itself emerged from and responded to the exhibition “If We Can’t Get It Together: Artists rethinking the (mal)function of communities,” curated by Nina Möntmann for The Power Plant in December 2008. Among the additional texts included in the volume are presentations from an earlier symposium entitled “New Communities” which took place in Stockholm, Sweden, in November 2008.
The publication includes texts by Carlos Basualdo & Reinaldo Laddaga, Simon Critchley, Jon Davies, Brian Holmes, Luis Jacob, Saara Liinamaa, Maria Lind, Nina Möntmann, Nikos Papastergiadis, Raqs Media Collective, Emily Roysdon, and contributions by Shaina Anand, Egle Budvytyte, Kajsa Dahlberg, Luis Jacob, Hassan Khan, Hadley+Maxwell, Emily Roysdon and Haegue Yang.