Marchés et nouveaux territoires de l’art dans les villes du Sud

(1)

Call for papers for the special issue of the Journal of Géographie et Cultures

Art Markets and New Territories for Art in Cities of the Global South

In many emerging countries, a boom in art markets is being driven by dynamism of local artistic production and cultural exchanges at regional and international levels. Simultaneously, and depending on the specific national context, for a variety of political or historic reasons, artistic production along with artists, institutions (galleries, museums, public or private foundations, festivals, auction houses...) and other individual stakeholders in the art world (gallery-owners, curators, collectors and so on) are participating in the circulation of art works on markets which are expanding on a regional or international scale.

For example, in the United Arab Emirates as well as other Gulf states such as Qatar, private collections, major museums and auction houses have been contributing, since the mid-2000s, to the growth of a middle-eastern contemporary art market. They have polarized the circulation of works and stakeholders by establishing new hierarchies between near and middle-eastern countries: the places where art works are shown are not necessarily those where they are produced. In return, in the context of globalization, thanks to this market, local artists and art scenes, especially in the visual arts, are gaining renown beyond their national borders. At the local level, especially in big cities, we can see – as with the urban renewal of European and US cities in the 1990s – artists, gallery-owners and others individuals involved in cultural activities moving into neighborhoods or brownfield areas that were in many cases formerly shunned. They frequently contribute to their rehabilitation, adding new symbolic values and reinforcing the ongoing “metropolization” by involving the cities in a process of cultural globalization.

To investigate these matters from surveys or empirical studies, this issue is open to contributions enabling us to shed light on such developments at local and/or regional level. Study of the art market’s growth in various emerging countries and their cities will be undertaken from various angles, at various levels and through different approaches, singly or combined:

• A local approach to contemporary art's urban territories: contributions, based on ethnographic surveys carried out in the cities in question, will investigate not only the transformation of spatial frameworks, processes of urbanization and metropolization as they relate to the emergence of regional markets, but also about the circulation of artistic productions, investigating the way it contributes locally to the spread of models of aesthetics, architecture and consumption. Analysis of these dynamics will also enable us to look into the formation of new spatial frameworks, processes of gentrification and urban rehabilitation and the revaluation of property, as well as emerging cultural practices and new places for social interaction that illustrate these new forms of urban living.

• An approach focusing on the stakeholders in these processes, founded on sociological methods: the key players (artists, curators, collectors, gallery-owners, patrons and others involved in the “culture business,” etc.), their professional behaviors and their practices in terms of regional or international mobility.

• A survey of institutions: museums, galleries, art fairs, biennales, festivals and so on. This will investigate in particular the way they are changing – even temporarily – the nature and configuration of local spaces and urban landscapes, but also favoring the emergence of local artists, or contributing to the professionalization of certain artistic practices. This approach to institutional

(2)

processes will include a look at what goes on at the margins, i.e. the activities of amateurs, also enabling to investigate the establishment of socio-spatial frontiers specific to artistic milieus and networks.

• Finally, an investigation of the role and status of cultural policies with regard to these urban developments. At national level, the governments of emerging countries often gain new international visibility thanks to their local art scenes and have no hesitation in including cultural activities in their political agenda as part of development policy. In the area of the visual arts in particular, in view of its market value, frequent collaboration between the private and public sector in promoting and distributing works offers illustrations of neoliberal governance. With this final angle of study, this issue may thus contribute to the analysis of the evolution of cultural practices within the framework of economic policy.

SUBMISSIONS AND ASSESSMENT

This special issue is edited by Sophie Brones (École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles, research fellow at IIAC- LAUM, EHESS-CNRS) and Amin Moghadam (Université Aix- Marseille, research fellow at URMIS). Articles will be assessed anonymously by two (in some cases three) assessors. Articles (of a maximum of 50,000 characters, including illustrations) should be submitted by September 30 2016 at the latest to the editors of Géographie et cultures (gc@openedition.org). Instructions to authors are available online: http://gc.revues.org/605

SUMMARY

This issue of Géographie et cultures proposes to explore the emergence of art markets in the metropoles of the Global South and related phenomena. It will investigate both the drivers of these new regional dynamics, in particular via the circulation of art works and stakeholders in the art world, and their local impact in terms of cultural and urban policy, the urban renewal of previously marginal neighborhoods, and the emergence of new public spaces or even new social norms and hierarchies.

KEY WORDS

Metropolization, Art market, Cultural circulations, cultural institutions, cultural policies, urban development