Autonomous Art Institutions

Alberto Cossu is Assistant Professor in media and communication within the School of Media, Communication and Sociology at the University of Leicester. He is a sociologist, researching the intersection between digital media and activism, qualitative and digital methods, collaborative and digital economies.

• INTRODUCTION: From Reaction to Autonomy: Protesting, Resisting and Creating Institutions1. Framing Art & Political Mobilisation2. Revealing the Backstage of an Ethnographic Study of Artists3. Art's Own Activism4. Organising for Being an Institution5. Producing Culture in the Neoliberal CityCONCLUSION: Doing the unthinkable: Becoming Institutions

In his breakthrough study of autonomous cultural institutions, Alberto Cossu tells us that artists are operating at the frontlines of transformative political mobilization, and yet with his uniquely engaged approach to urban research it is Cossu himself who joins the frontline as a new type of socially active ethnographer. Cossu’s investigation into contemporary forms of bottom-up community organizing will prove to be a requisite reference for transformative artists, scholars, theorists and activists in the foreseeable future.