On Urban Renewal, Saatchi, and Reterritorialized Markets

Venkatesh notes that while “hanging out” in “poor black Chicago neighborhoods,” he was able to observe the clandestine working of pimps, prostitutes, gangbangers, mechanics and preachers, and that these individuals maintained a sophisticated system of order and socio-economic relations mirroring western laws and regulations. This perspective, mixed with his observation that “beneath closed storefronts, burned-out buildings…and empty lots, there is an intricate, fertile web of exchange, tied together by people with tremendous human capital and craftsmanship,” complements what de Soto explained in his book: that seemingly poor and underrepresented communities have their own system of capitalism which many a time surpasses in worth that of legal capitalist markets. However, the difference for de Soto is that he does not see these “black markets” as being commercially viable within a global framework until these markets turn their “dead assets” into liquid capital. In this sense, de Soto remains loyal to a Western legal order and its conservative and empty promises.

Although Lowe’s Project Row Houses remain strictly attached to a legal economic framework, Lowe seems to have figured out a way in which to mine capitalist markets not only to feed his own creativity, but more importantly for the implementation and transformation of a reterritorilizing creative nexus. The facts are inconclusive as to whether the Project Row House nexus has its own de Sotoan or Venkatehsian system of order and function, but if so, this would surely work to their advantage. Beuys may have been right in his edict that every human action is a work of art, but not seeing the Saatchi predicament, he failed to mention the most important part: not every work of art is a human action.

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