Abstract

In this article, the researcher maps the collective aesthetic practices of a community of makers who have transformed a decommissioned missile base into a residence and community space. The site of the missile base is framed as an assemblage of physical and temporal universes mixed and layered, where its previous uses and occupation have formed a subjective residue that expresses itself physically via objects and architecture and mentally through a kind of collective memory inscribed in the site. 

Félix Guattari’s (1992/1995) ecosophical approach to analysis is used to consider how subjectivity is produced through collective aesthetic practices, focusing on the potential of bringing communities together through anti-capitalist exchanges of time and skill. The concepts of transversality and dissensus are introduced to identify ways that art educators might work together across prescribed social groups and spaces to question habituated ways of thinking and acting, considering the revolutionary potential of art education to contribute to “a new art of living in society” (Guattari, 1992/1995, p. 21).

How to Cite:

Coats, C., (2015) “Materializing Transversal Potential: An Ecosophical Analysis of the Dissensual Aestheticization of a Decommissioned Missile Base”, Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education 32(1), 127-160. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jcrae.4911