Dystopian and Utopian Impulses in Art Making: The World We Want

An exploration of diverse art practices that attempt to offer new ways of understanding and being in the world.

Contemporary art has a complex relationship with crisis. On the one hand, art can draw us toward apocalypse: it charts unfolding chaos, reflects and amplifies the effects of crisis, and shows us the dystopian in both our daily life and in our imagined futures. On the other hand, art’s complexity helps us fathom the uncertainty of the world, question and challenge the order of things, and allows us to imagine new ways of living and being--to make new worlds.

This collection of written and visual essays includes artistic responses to various crises--including the climate emergency, global and local inequalities, and the COVID-19 pandemic--and suggests new forms of collectivity and collaboration within artistic practice. It surveys a wide variety of practices, oriented from the perspective of Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. Art making has always responded to the world; the essays in this collection explore how artists are adapting to a world in crisis. The contributions to this book are arranged in four sections: artistic responses; critical reflections, new curatorial approaches, and the art school reimagined. Alongside the written chapters, three photographic essays provide specific examples of new visual forms in artistic practice under crisis conditions.

Grace McQuilten is associate professor in the School of Art at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. She is the coauthor, most recently, of Art as Enterprise: Social & Economic Engagement in Contemporary Art. Daniel Palmer is associate dean of research and innovation in the School of Art at RMIT University. He is author of Photography and Collaboration: From Conceptual Art to Crowdsourcing.