Mortal City

by Peter Lang (Editor)

"Each and every individual in the global community is both spectator and participant in urban carnage: responsible both for the international administration of violence and its profitable documentation for worldmarket consumption." - Peter Lang

Urban violence increasingly dominates our day-to-day existence: we watchfootage of the earthquake in Japan, the bombing of Chechnya, the war in Bosnia - and not so long ago, the same year that war broke out in Bosnia, we watched the horror of the Los Angeles riots. As events in Sarajevo and Los Angeles demonstrate, these crises continue without imminent resolutions. The very definitions of the city and of violence are constantly being revised: the city is no longer a fixed site but has hemorrhaged across real and imagined space; while violence has moved beyond the traditional arenas of social conflict to pervade daily life.

"Mortal City," published with StoreFront for Art and Architecture, probes the polemical nature of urban violence. The essays present several different approaches to the subject, reflecting the most recent historical, geographical, and theoretical developments in these fields.

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996