Realty: Beyond the Traditional Blueprints of Art & Gentrification

Theorists and artists ask: how can art ends its complicity with gentrification?

Based on a long-term program led by KW Berlin curator and writer Tirdad Zolghadr, Realty promotes strategies to overcome contemporary art’s complicity with gentrification, and to instead put the massive leverage and wealth now circulating in the art industry to positive use. With the help of numerous artists and experts who have contributed to Zolghadr’s program between 2017 and 2020, this reader examines how contemporary art can contribute to decisive conversations on urbanism. The book thereby eschews the rabbit hole of infinite critique that typically dogs this subject, in favor of presenting ideas for practical positive change.
Contributors include: Marwa Arsanios, Khaldun Bshara, Laura Calbet Elias, Marco Clausen, Simone Hain, Maria Hetzer, Sabine Horlitz, Suhail Malik, Bahar Noorizadeh, Marion von Osten, Kristel Raesaar, Penny Rafferty, Christopher Roth, Katya Sander and Paul Seidler.