Nick Ferguson is an early-career researcher based at Richmond, the American University in London and Kingston University, London. His doctoral thesis, Indifference. Art, Liberalism and the Politics of Place, (2015) examines the legacy of classical liberal thought in contemporary art commissioning. Through a series of cross readings between philosophy, aesthetics and political geography, it traces a relationship between place-making art practices and classical liberalism’s conceptualisation of the way territory might function in a market society. Concurrently, and by way of methodological instrument with which to examine place making, the thesis develops a philosophy of indifference. Through case studies from art and literature, it contends that indifference, alongside disinterestedness and objectivity, should be understood as part of an historical attempt to develop a critical modern subject that might transcend the self and disrupt both public and private power. By extension, it is asked whether the cultivation of indifference to place might serve as an artistic tactic by which to negate the cultural forces that market place for the consolidation of private advantage.