Mute Magazine

Post-Fordist state planners, developers, and their entrepreneurial service arm have debased the meaning of 'creativity' to a shallow pretext for the further looting of cities and public wealth. The cookie-cutter aestheticisation of selective zones of our cities (tourist promenades, waterside public art, creative quarters), is a mere fig leaf covering the acts of enclosure and exclusion that cultural regeneration entails. As the sensibilities of the Creative Class are sensationalised, courted, and monetised, the creative possibilities of the dehumanised majority narrow. But as the recession bites, there are signs that dreams of the Creative City are crashing, as the public-purse strings tighten and the financial sector's ability to underwrite the creative industries weakens. In this issue we revel in that possibility, explore artists' creative sabotage of their own regenerative co-optation, and philosophically examine what 'expression' might actually be. Dériving Under the Influence Chris Jones inspects the wounds opened by Laura Oldfield Ford's pictures of regenerate London CG2014: Formulary For a Skewed Urbanism Neil Gray ambushes the cowboy capitalists staking out Glasgow's 'urban frontier' The Creative City In Ruins Artist's project by Nils Norman Concerning Art and Social Change Brian Holmes and Marco Deseriis on critical culture within recuperative 'semiocapitalism' All Mouth, No History William Dixon gets gobby with Christian Marazzi and his linguistic analysis of financialisation Debt: The First Five Thousand Years David Graeber gives us the elevator pitch on debt's violent history Hungry Ghost Steve McQueen's filmHunger whets Paul Helliwell's appetite for some political context A Climatic Disorder? John Cunningham clears the air after a meeting between Climate Campers and the NUM 'The Simple Expression of Complex Thought' M. Beatrice Fazi splices interactive media and the philosophy of expression Objective Phantoms Kenneth Cox toys with Romanian poet Ghérasim Luca's objects and desires