Art/Commons

Mollona is our absolutely singular guide through the interwoven fields of critical theory, global activism and contemporary art as it has turned away from capitalist markets and towards hosting new forms of cooperation, care and community. Unlike so many recent texts in art and theory which offer us slogans and platitudes, Mollona's book invites us to think deeply, carefully and with conviction about the commons from a diverse, worldly and intersectional perspective. It demands we recognize the imagination as a common power that can destroy systems of domination and create worlds of solidarity and freedom. * Max Haiven, Associate Professor, Lakehead University *
With intellectual intensity and ethical commitment, Mollona tackles the question of how artistic practices oriented to the common can counter the abstractions of capitalist aesthetics, Moving seamlessly from critical theories of aesthetics and capital to contemporary experiments in art collectivity and communing, Art/commons provides an anti-colonial, antiracist manifesto for an expanded understanding of art as the multiple ways in which creating together cultivates new habits of affect, new relays of energy, and alternative modes of mutual embodiment far removed from the gallery, museum, and cinema. * Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Professor of Anthropology & Gender Studies, Columbia University, USA *
Art/Commons deftly takes Anthropology out of your comfort zone when it foregrounds racial critique in a reflection on what has been named its object’s, that is, the Human’s, unique capacities, namely productivity (economic) and creativity (aesthetic). It is a must read for anyone interested in exploring the ethico-political possibilities that open when art guides the critique of capital. * Denise Ferreira da Silva, philosopher, visual and relational artist, and the author of Toward a Global Idea of Race *