Envisaging Spatial Crisis: ‘On Capital and Territory’ and the Diagnosis of the Present

Mari Paz Balibrea returns to the project ‘On Capital and Territory’ to explore its Lefebvrian underpinnings, and, in particular, its treatment of Andalusia, a region marked both by branded stereotype and an inflated real estate market. One of the most urgent questions for artistic and cultural production in the Spanish context today concerns the conditions of possibility and dissemination of critical thinking. Where can one find sustained reflection on the present era and the place of Spain within it, on the pressing issues defining our historical moment or on the role of art and culture within this historical moment? Where are audiences being given access to artistic and cultural forms that interpellate them as discriminating thinkers and social agents? Where are the hard questions pointing to the consequences of living under conditions of the radical and inescapable commodification of art and culture? Where are art and culture being thought politically? Where is utopian thinking being made possible? Where are young practitioners and students aspiring to a career in the creative industries or to an education in the humanities being trained to think critically, to defy disciplinary boundaries, to question their own practice and the structures and institutions that make it possible?