Post-Fordist state planners, developers, and their entrepreneurial service arm have debased the meaning of 'creativity' to a shallow pretext for the further looting of cities and public wealth. The cookie-cutter aestheticisation of selective zones of our cities (tourist promenades, waterside public art, creative quarters), is a mere fig leaf covering the acts of enclosure and exclusion that cultural regeneration entails. As the sensibilities of the Creative Class are sensationalised, courted, and monetised, the creative possibilities of the dehumanised majority narrow. But as the recession bites, there are signs that dreams of the Creative City are crashing, as the public-purse strings tighten and the financial sector's ability to underwrite the creative industries weakens. In this issue we revel in that possibility, explore artists' creative sabotage of their own regenerative co-optation, and philosophically examine what 'expression' might actually be. Deriving Under the Influence Chris Jones inspects the wounds opened by Laura Oldfield Ford's pictures of regenerate London CG2014: Formulary For a Skewed Urbanism Neil Gray ambushes the cowboy capitalists staking out Glasgow's 'urban frontier' The Creative City In Ruins Artist's project by Nils Norman Concerning Art and Social Change Brian Holmes and Marco Deseriis on critical culture within recuperative 'semiocapitalism' All Mouth, No History William Dixon gets gobby with Christian Marazzi and his linguistic analysis of financialisation Debt: The First Five Thousand Years David Graeber gives us the elevator pitch on debt's violent history Hungry Ghost Steve McQueen's filmHunger whets Paul Helliwell's appetite for some political context A Climatic Disorder? John Cunningham clears the air after a meeting between Climate Campers and the NUM 'The Simple Expression of Complex Thought' M. Beatrice Fazi splices interactive media and the philosophy of expression Objective Phantoms Kenneth Cox toys with Romanian poet Gherasim Luca's objects and desires

In this issue of Mute we revisit the question of 'the human' in the age of biopolitics. What do philosophers, activists and 'pro-revolutionaries' have to say about homo sapiens in a world where monstrous claims on value demand populations be reduced to 'bare (hardworking) life'? From repression of messy 'species being' in revolutionary milieus, to the managerial dream of putting supposed species traits like language and empathy to work, the stakes of determining humanness, or resisting that determination, are high. Burdened by the Absence of Billions? Howard Slater reviews Frere Dupont's Species Being and Other Stories He's Not Beyond Good and Evil Nina Power asks if there's a point to Paolo Virno's unhappy human Monstrous Plans & Good Habitats Mark Crinson on suggestions that anti-colonisation struggles were also about architecture The Political Immunity of Discourse Erik Empson on Roberto Esposito's Bios Wishful Thinkers of the Calamity Bazaar John Barker says the time to attack the fantasy world of capitalist spin-doctors is now The Who and Whom of Liberty Taking Peter Linebaugh asks how it's possible to discuss liberty in the absence of equality Duck! You Regeneration Sucker Neil Gray watches David Panos and Anja Kirschner's Trail of the Spider and finds history repeating itself The Sleep of Realism Produces Monsters Andrew Fisher considers documentary maker Adam Curtis' claims to 'realism' and political neutrality Quarterly, critical and cheap, Mute is a concrete jumble of all that's still grunting in the inter-finessing hyper-barrios of culture, politics and technology 2.0. As capitalism yawns towards apocalypse we match it issue by issue with a sustained critique of everything existing, from eco prole-bashing and shanty chic to academic aut-onanist marxistry

The state is pouring billions into propping up the collapsing financial sector, but who is going to take care of the rest of us? Between Hollywood's embattled superbats and the gruesome charisma contests of political party leaders, we can be sure of one thing - we don't need another hero! Mute surveys some popular myths of political-economic salvation (and damnation), and looks for signs of collective agency in the global Gotham Liverpool - Culture of Capital: Leo Singer & Clara Paillard crash Liverpool's regeneration party Descrambling the Food Crisis: George Caffentzis puts the class politics of hunger back on the table From Subprime to Slump?: Jon Amsden argues that the capitalist doom doctors have got things the wrong way round Mr Smith Goes to Beijing: Daniel Berchenko on Giovanni Arrighi's retrogressive vision of China as the future of capitalism Mexican Wave: Mihalis Mentinis on a new cycle of armed anti-capitalist struggle in Mexico Any Other But Our Selves: J.J. Charlesworth on Other-worship in the art gallery and the denigration of human agency Orientalism Inverted: the Rise of 'Hindu Nation': Neil Gray on Indianness as German ideology, from colonial mystique to neoliberal pogroms One World, One Lie: Paula Cerni finds a thoroughly modern lack of democracy in Tibet Quarterly, critical and cheap, Mute is a concrete jumble of all that's still grunting in the inter-finessing hyper-barrios of culture, politics and technology 2.0. As capitalism yawns towards apocalypse we match it issue by issue with a sustained critique of everything existing, from eco prole-bashing and shanty chic to academic aut-onanist marxistry

Featuring; Falling for the Future - Iain Boal brings modernity's futuramas back down to earth. Citizens Banned? - Josephine Berry Slater and Anthony Iles review the AV media arts festival. Crisis in the Visual System - Paul Helliwell argues the art world's favourite philosopher, Jacques Ranciere, does have something to hide. Borders 2.0: Future, Tense - Bryan Finoki and Angela Mitropoulos present an incursion, in text and image, into the contemporary borderlands. Manufactured Scarcity - James Heartfield on Enron's pioneering of green capitalism through cutting production. Battle of All Mothers - Madame Tlank on welfare, surveillance and working class women. When Travesty Becomes Form - Alberto Duman contemplates the cyclical self-affirmation of the curator. Your Five a Day! - Quarterly, critical and cheap, Mute is a concrete jumble of all that's still grunting in the inter-finessing hyper-barrios of culture, politics, and technology 2.0. As capitalism yawns toward apocalypse we match it issue by issue with a sustained critique of everything existing from eco prole-bashing and shanty chic to academic aut-onanist marxistry. An average portion of Mute contains all the cultural vitamins essential to a healthy (contempt for the) economy. http://metamute.org

This issue contains works by Thomas Campbell and Dmitry Vorobyev, John Cunningham, Harry Halpin, Stewart Martin, Benedict Seymour, and Simon Yuill, with commissioned artwork by Theo Michael, John Russell, and Plastique Fantastique.

This issue features articles by Anthony Davies, Paul Helliwell, Howard Slater, and Peter Suchin, and a special section on climate change and capital with texts by Will Barnes, James Woudhuysen, Tim Forsyth and Zoe Young, Kate Rich, George Caffentzis, Anthony Iles, Chris Wright, and Samantha Alvarez.

Web 2.0's democratisation of media produces a wealth of new perspectives. Those formerly excluded from the public sphere have the chance to make their voices heard. But this wave of participation is as important for busines as it is for the newly included. Mute's Web 2.0 special uncovers the work in social networking and the centralisation of the means of sharing. Features texts by Giorgio Agostoni, Olga Goriunova, Dmytri Kleiner & Brian Wyrick and Angela Mitropoulos. With additional articles by Brian Ashton, John Barker, Paul Helliwell and Merijn Oudenampsen.

According to UN research data, by 2030 half of the world's population will be living in slums. Meanwhile, in Durban, residents of Forman and Kennedy Road settlements risk arrest and police violence to protest forced eviction and demand clean drinking water and sanitation. The statistics are not supposed to talk back. This issue of Mute, largely sparked by Mike Davis' claim that in the megaslums Muhammad and the Holy Ghost have superceded Marx, considers another view of the world's burgeoning 'naked cities'. Where the populace are refugees without rights or basic amenities, are new forms of political action emerging? Texts by: Amita Baviskar, Iain Boal, Anna Dezeuze, Michael Edwards, Melanie Gilligan, Anthony Iles, Demetra Kotouza, Penny Koutrolikou, Josaphat Robert Large, Felix Morisseau-Leroy, Kevin Pina, Richard Pithouse, Benedict Seymour and Rachel Weber

Since the advent of multiculturalism in the 1970s, the redefinition of race in cultural terms has gone hand in hand with an official discourse of respect for cultural difference and diversity. Today, in the wake of 9/11, the rhetoric of tolerance is visibly breaking down. As state policy shifts from the celebration of difference to an anxious call for assimilation, the racial other (whether citizen or immigrant) is under renewed pressure to integrate herself into society. In this issue of Mute, contributors read the crisis of multiculturalism - political, scientific and social - as both a neoliberal offensive and a challenge to rethink the relationship between particular identities and universal rights, evolutionary science and biopower. Texts by: George Caffentzis, Matthew Hyland, Daniel Jewesbury, Marek Kohn, Eric Krebbers, Hari Kunzru, Melancholic Troglodytes, Angela Mitropoulos, Luciana Parisi, Benedict Seymour