The art of the common: Envisioning real utopias in postindustrial Detroit

For decades, the city of Detroit has been an icon of urban disinvestment. In recent years, the devastation has taken on a romantic patina in images of the city's deliquescing architecture known as "ruin porn." The Motor City's identity as an avatar of modernity gone awry possesses scopophilic allure; however, there is another, arguably more fertile tendency that has emerged that can be termed the "art of the common." The art of the common first emerged in desolate sectors of the city, in places where the abandoned landscape offered opportunities for creative agency to flourish by sheer force of will. The art of common trespasses boundaries of conventional property relations of modern capitalism, existing in an indeterminate zone between public and private as customarily understood.;The dissertation presents a case study of cultural producers, organized under the non-profit Power House Productions, working in the Detroit inner-city neighborhood of Banglatown, an area once populated by German and Polish immigrants and now a gateway for newcomers originating from the Indian subcontinent. Power House Productions and its art-activist collaborators are analyzed through the theoretical lens of Eric Olin Wright's concept of the real utopia, especially as it relates to interstitial practices. It is contrasted with the redevelopment of Detroit's central business district and surrounding areas, exemplars of what John Logan and Harvey Molotch term "the growth machine" and the process of gentrification. The central thesis is that these artists are not the vanguard of postmodern capital but are instead exploring new ways of living, ways of envisioning life if not after capital then at least in a reconfigured environment where economics and the state are mediated by civil society. The dissertation presents a case study of a group of cultural producers, organized under the non-profit Power House Productions, working in the neglected Detroit inner-city neighborhood of Banglatown, an area once populated by German and Polish immigrants and now a gateway for newcomers originating from the Indian subcontinent. The work of Power House Productions and its art-activist collaborators is analyzed through the theoretical lenses of Jacques Ranciere's (2009) notion of aesthetic community and Eric Olin Wright's concept of the real utopia, especially as it relates to interstitial practices. It is contrasted with the redevelopment of Detroit's central business district and surrounding areas as exemplars of what John Logan and Harvey Molotch term "the growth machine" and the process of gentrification.;The central thesis is that these artists are not the vanguard of postmodern capital but are instead exploring new ways of living, ways of envisioning life if not after capital then at least in a reconfigured environment where economics and the state are mediated by civil society.