Foucault Studies

Cover art: "Ihmisen poika" (The Son of Man) © Sampsa Sarparanta, 2009.

Miikka Pyykkönen about the cover art: Painter and punk rock musician Sampsa Sarparanta has been one of the figures in the alternative movements scene in Finland for some time. His music and paintings touch upon the topics of this special issue on civil society – especially the question of the possibility of resistance in today’s world.

Cover art: © Judith Scott, Untitled, 2004. Courtesy of Creative Growth Art Center.

Shelley Tremain writes about the cover art: The background of the photo is black. The artwork in the photo is a sculpture comprised of a bright blue wooden chair with four legs and a back, some parts of which are wrapped in fabric and wool of assorted colours. Various items, including an upturned basket on the seat of the chair and a white wheel rim that sits upright against the back of the chair, are tied to the chair with criss-crossing and overlapping strands of multicoloured fabric, wool, string, and paper. The sculpture was created by Judith Scott, a fiber artist who died in 2005, at the age of 61. Scott, who was deaf and had Down Syndrome, was institutionalized from age seven until her early forties and began to produce her amazing sculptures and other art only after her twin sister removed her from the institution and introduced her to Creative Growth, a centre for disabled artists located in Oakland, CA. From December 2014-March 2015, the Brooklyn Museum held a retrospective of Scott's work. A review of that retrospective show with a slide show of some of Scott's work appeared in The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/arts/design/judith-scotts-enigmatic-sculptures-at-the-brooklyn-museum.html.

The cover image was produced by Astra Howard, an Action Researcher/Performer currently living in Sydney Australia. Spanning more than a decade, her work has sought to elicit and document marginalised, or overlooked, experiences and discourses of the city. The specific image I have chosen is part of a series entitled 'Kings Cross the Whisper.' This series displays selections from a poem about the Kings Cross area that was written by a local socially marginalised man. The image alludes to forgotten histories and marginalization in an increasingly homogenised and gentrified part of Sydney.

Aernout Mik, Schoolyard, 2009, 2 screen video installation, Courtesy carlier | gebauer, Photograph: Florian Braun

The image is entitled "Red Grunge 5" and is used with courtesy of SXC.hu who holds the copyright