Portside

Attempting to make a silk purse out of a proverbial sow's ear, the author and the volume's contributors envision, either realistically or ironically, how building a wall on the U.S.- Mexican border could be artistically or environmentally pleasing, leaving aside ethical questions of migrants' rights or even how such a wall would be anything but a glaring insult to those living south of it.

Perhaps in no U.S. city is the wreckage wrought by today's capitalism better seen than in Detroit, the once mighty auto metropolis now morphed into a showcase of post-industrial abandonment. New signs of rebirth and redevelopment there are fraught with contradictions, as artists and gentrifiers engage in what Dora Apel calls "ruin lust." Here, Scott McLemee reviews Apel's take on the (former?) Motor City and post-industrial tourism and aesthetics.