DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Transacting as Art, Design and Architecture

A Non-Commercial Market

Marsha Bradfield editor Cinzia Cremona editor Amy McDonnell editor Eva Sajovic editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Intellect

Published:10th Feb '23

Should be back in stock very soon

Transacting as Art, Design and Architecture cover

Transacting as Art, Design and Architecture: A Non-Commercial Market re-performs the original event #TransActing: A Market of Values as a printed text with the ambition of investing in the published word and image at least some of the original market’s depth and liveness. Holding fast to the experimental ethos of Critical Practice, this anthology does not shy away from risk when the aim is expanding the fields of art, design and architectural research. The authors’ distinct but also overlapping forms (practical, poetic, analytical, etc.) track with the plurality of voices, the processes that have nurtured the cluster as it has worked internationally for more than a decade to produce unique projects.

The book opens with contributions that reflect on TransActing as collaborative practice-based research. The introduction contextualizes this popup market within London’s long history of local marketplaces. Cued by emerging government policy on market sustainability, the tripartite of place, people and prosperity helps to frame TransActing. Taking a different approach, a partial self-portrait of Critical Practice traces TransActing’s becoming over more than a decade of activity and five years of research on value. This is followed by an account of the market’s physical infrastructure: the prototyping of bespoke stalls which were built from recycled materials, an approach inspired by an early example of open-source furniture design. This comes to life in the next section: polyphonic observations on the stalls in use and the market more generally. The stallholders’ reflections capture the experience of those directly involved and are richly illustrated with images of or related to their stalls.

The second part of Transacting as Art, Design and Architecture is composed of commissioned texts to contextualise the market by weaving together references from various fields. These include celebrating the value system of TransActing, especially its critique econometrics. Closely connected to the latter, which was occasioned by Critical Practice’s tenth anniversary, is the subsequent paper's consideration of invisible, feminized labour, which is as undervalued as it is indispensable to cultural production. Taking a slightly different tack is the use of architectural theory (past and present) to trace the transforming nature of the public market, especially as an arena of consumerism. This is followed by an account that looks at the experience of TransActing from the perspective of...

Transacting as Art, Design and Architecture's strength is the multi-vocal and comprehensive manner in which it approaches questions of market, marketplace and exchange. The book is also strengthened by the cacophony of voices that contribute to the imagining and enactment of a different kind of marketplace. In this sense, it is a tour de force, combining conceptual, practice and process-derived insights to offer an inspiring vision of being and living otherwise. 

-- Agnes Czajka, Senior Lecturer, Politics and International Studies, The Open Univer

ISBN: 9781789384437

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

266 pages