Drawing as an Ethico-political Practice

Abstract

This essay explores drawing as an ethico-political practice. Taking London as an example, I speculate about a critical and creative, radical and imaginative engagement with speculative urbanization processes at a time when the extreme right is on the rise and the populist far right has become increasingly mainstream. Reflecting on a nonrepresentational drawing approach that responds to distantiated expert eyes by breaking free from their knowledge and pre-defined moral standards of the capitalist city, I explore different lines: lines that commodify the cityscape; lines that cross commodifying categories; lines that creatively produce alternatives; and lines of violent creativity. In so doing, I scrutinize conservative links between a visuality of capital accumulation and fascist urban aesthetics.