In the shadows of the white heat of urbanization, the countryside is undergoing great social and environmental changes. What cultural and philosophical values are being lost and gained as a consequence of these transformations? Familiar tropes of tradition, nostalgia and certitude are strangely out of place in such contested and uncertain contemporary rural terrains. Inside Rurality Re-imagined, 24 artists, designers and academics engage with particular rural places, processes and experiences. At the same time, they question the conceptual apparatus through which the rural is represented. In so doing they reveal a countryside that is multifaceted, anxious, and replete with possibilities.
Rurality Re-imagined should be of interest to anyone concerned with how rural space and society is portrayed in our urban-centric times.