Using an arts-based inquiry, “Precarious Spaces” addresses current concerns around the instrumentality and agency of art in the context of the precarity of daily life. The book offers a survey of socially and community-engaged art practices in South America, focusing in particular on Brazil's 'informal' situation, and contributes much to the ongoing debate of the possibility for change through social, environmental and ecological solutions. The individual chapters, compiled by Katarzyna Kosmala and Miguel Imas, present a wide spectrum of contemporary social agency models with a particular emphasis on detailed case studies and local histories. Featuring critical reflections on the spaces of urban voids, derelict buildings, self-built communities such as favela and roadside occupations, “Precarious Spaces” will make readers question their assumptions about precarity, and life in precarious realms.
"'This book presents an important and timely documentation of political and community-based art practices, focusing on Latin America, where in the past few decades the most inspiring social and political experiments have taken place. In times when austerity and precarity also touch those states and regions considered as "rich", self-organization becomes a tool of survival all across the world.'"
