Issue 41 of P L S magazine looks at the realities of artistic creation beyond urban areas and interrogates the idea of territory. At once a spatial entity and a symbolic construction, and always closely linked to the beings who inhabit it, territory is today being taken up as a critical and speculative tool by researchers and artists alike. The presence of contemporary art away from urban centres is anything but new, and yet it has undergone a number of important developments in recent years; France in particular has seen a proliferation of initiatives led by artists living and working in collectives far from cities. These locally anchored projects, blending art, technology, craft and social practices as well as programming, production, residencies, research and pedagogy through individual and collective creative projects, are all sustained in different ways by ecological questions.
Through artists’ contributions and essays, this issue explores these various realities. It is not a question of romanticising a “return to nature” or of essentialising socio-artistic differences. Rather, we should look to observe how the ways of living and creating in territories that are under- or misrepresented in the collective imagination can give concrete form to highly contemporary issues and even bring about inspiring alternatives for the art world in general.