Introduction: City/Text/Performance

Work on this collection began in the year of the city. Though we didn’t know it at the time, 2006 marked the turning point at which more than 50 percent of the Earth’s population could be called urban dwellers (Johnson). Social theorists and media pundits, quick to grab the world-altering news, were left to speculate on the effects that this fundamental demographic milestone will have on the shape of our emerging ‘city planet’ (Stewart Brand, qtd in Johnson). These effects will, by all accounts, be transformational. They will change the political economy of industrialized democracies as voter redistribution redraws (or fails to redraw) the electoral map. They will change (are already changing) the shape of global economic systems and the relative value of goods production, altering the balance between the ‘resource’ economy and the ‘information’ economy. They will have a massive impact on our planet’s environment, shaping our responses to ongoing climate change. And, of course, the rising influence of urban space and urban issues will put pressure on scholars, writers, and artists, altering the circumstances and relative value of their work’s production and reception. As Miwon Kwon argues, artists have in the last few decades become culture-makers-for-hire, traveling from city to city to lend the cache of their reputations to productions and exhibits that serve as elaborate civic marketing campaigns.