The Battleground of Art - by Marco Baravalle (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A radical manifesto advocating art's autonomy in the fight against neoliberal capture

Activist and curator Marco Baravalle shows how artists across the Global South and North are building alter-institutions - autonomous, collective infrastructures that challenge both state and market control. Drawing on operaismo, decolonial theory, and two decades of radical curating, Baravalle outlines an artistic practice grounded in cooperation, solidarity, and resistance.

Review Quotes

"Prepare to be uplifted by Baravalle's rousing, and deeply thoughtful, profile of radical, creative work that flourishes outside of the capital-saturated sectors of the artworld."
--Andrew Ross, author of The Weather Report: A Journey Through Unsettled Climates

"In this theoretically rich and politically engaged book, Baravalle not only mounts a powerful critique of the neoliberal institutions of the art world but also demonstrates that alternatives exist, analyzing contemporary artists and curators who create 'alter-institutions, ' in part by learning from and collaborating with some of the most radical political movements of recent years."
--Michael Hardt, author of The Subversive Seventies

"Baravalle's The Battleground of Art presents a rigorous, first-person traversal of Left cultural resistance from Operaismo to the present, grounded in both theoretical depth and decades of actual organizing. His concept of alter-institutionality is the most urgent vision of emancipatory cultural futures available to us today."
--Gregory Sholette, author of The Radical Unpresent

"The Battleground of Art is a whistleblower of a book on the contradictions that shape the assembly, the commons and curating as an ideological moment but also an insurgency in the history of capitalism as the history of contemporary art. Baravalle refuses a politics of melancholy, practising a nuanced theorisation of the breakthroughs of oppositional curating and organising within, beyond and against institutions. A treasure of a study on the complexity of the left's (art) history, curatorial consciousness and struggle from below."
--Angela Dimitrakaki, Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Edinburgh and author of Feminism. Art. Capitalism

"This clever book tells us what we can expect of public art institutions today, how activists can work with them and when it is time to turn round and walk away. Taking the past two decades as his fieldwork, Barravalle shows how a few institutions tried to resist their own structural logic, and how a new generation might propose grounds on which to build them anew and support an "art of the common"."
--Charles Esche

"This is, truly, a remarkable book, one we need in the current neoliberal, ethno-nationalist, racist, fascistic counter-revolution of white supremacy. Baravalle unpacks how these infect the art world, retracing the ways the free market and individualism became common sense and why artists began selling themselves as self-entrepreneurs, before highlighting the current trends of autonomous art spaces born from a spirit of radical resistance. A must read by anyone fighting neoliberalism, pacification through multiculturalism and the fetishism of the self, racism and imperialism."
--Françoise Vergès, author of A Decolonial Feminism

"Against the background of the ongoing crisis and recomposition of neoliberalism in a conjuncture of war, Baravalle interrogates the forms of capture and governmentality that shape artistic practices and institutions. From within - and against - the capital relation that structures artistic practices and institutions, he reframes the operaista workers' standpoint and method of inquiry, tracing the contours of a radical alter-institutional praxis and a theory of art in the horizon of the common. An essential read for scholars, artists, curators, and activists alike."
--Sandro Mezzadra, co-author of The Rest and the West: Capital and Power in a Multipolar World

"An exceptionally lucid and timely study of how artists and curators build alternative institutions that resist the neoliberal capture of culture. Baravalle focuses on curatorial practices rooted in specific contexts and constituencies that seek to reconfigure contemporary art and its ties to neoliberal power, while also grappling with the limits and contradictions they encounter when working within existing structures. This book is indispensable for thinking about how cultural institutions operate under contemporary capitalism and the possibilities for their transformation."
--Alexander Alberro, author of Institutional Critique and After

About the Author

Marco Baravalle is a Venice-based researcher, curator, and activist. A co-founder of the Institute of Radical Imagination and Sale Docks, he works at the intersection of art, politics, and social movements. His research focuses on neoliberalism, colonialism, and the relationship between art and ecology, exploring how cultural institutions can be reimagined through collective and anticapitalist practices. He is the co-editor of Art for Radical Ecologies (Manifesto) (2024) and has long been involved in international networks of radical curating and art activism.