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a wiki of socially engaged art

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    • Elements of Sound
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  • Student Work
    • Assignments for Public Art and Pedagogy
      • Displacement
      • Movement at Site of Tension
      • Invent a Country, Church or Corporation
      • Transform an Institution
      • Anti-Lecture
      • Mass Drawing Experiment
    • Assignments for Activism and Social Movements
      • Circulate a Joke
      • Call to Action
      • Plant, Garden, Cook, Eat
      • Intervention at a Cultural Institution
      • Daily Performance
      • Masking or Covering
  • Global Actions
    • Against Normalized Shit
  • Social Practice Lab

Tactical Frivolity

Tactical frivolity is a method of protest in which incorporates elements of “humour, whimsy and the carnivalesque.” This approach to resistance provides a means of broadcasting a message or voicing opposition in a playful manner that may be more approachable for the general public. Furthermore, when presented in direct conflict with authority figures, modes of …

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Tools for Action

The project began back in 2010 with inspiration drawn from the quote, “Art is not a mirror to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.” With this the Electric Electric Collective alongside other artists crafted gigantic inflatable tools to parade around in public spaces. The original project consisted in the creation of a …

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Detroit, Demolition, Disneyland (Object Orange)

In 2005, a group of five Detroit artists decided to use paint to demolish the city’s buildings in disrepair. As they explained, “The artistic move is simple, cover the front in Tiggeriffic Orange – a color from the Mickey Mouse series, easily purchased from Home Depot. Every board, every door, every window, is caked in …

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Precarious Workers Pageant

At S.a.L.E. docks, a contemporary art space in Venice, individuals from the Workers Art Coalition, Aaron Burr Society, Social Practice Queens, and G.U.L.F. gathered together to organize the Precarious Workers Pageant. Targeting the deplorable labor conditions that plague the workers building the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, participants visually presented the issues of poverty and hardship that …

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We Are = Movement

Beginning in 2012, We are = Movement creates pop-up events and establish what they term “embodied public spaces” where body literacy remains the focus. By collectively engaging with their bodies, participants find importance in corporeal knowledge. One project in particular, titled Heartbeat Soundscapes, involves amplifying stethoscopes to fill a public space with the sound of …

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The Weather Project

Situated in the Tate Modern in 2003, The Weather Project by Olafur Eliasson transforms Turbine Hall into a representation of the sun and sky. The sun consists of monofrequency lights that alter the perception of color within the installation. Mist generated by haze machines creates a fog that pervades the participants and the space. Participants …

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Cleaning – What Else Could We Talk About

As a part of the greater installation What Else Could We Talk About for the 2009 Venice Biennale, Teresa Margolles’ “Cleaning,” places a janitorial figure at the center of an empty room. Engaging in the simple action of mopping the floor, the man continuously cleans silently as viewers look on and step through the room. …

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Soundsuits

In the first of several creations, American artist Nick Cave constructed a full body suit of small found twigs as a response to Rodney King’s beating. The once-strewn twigs fell in line with the black male identity: disregarded and degraded. The rustling sounds of the twig-suit when worn led Cave to the creation of future …

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Art as Experience

An aesthetic theory developed by philosopher John Dewey, Art as Experience outlines the shift from art as an object to the consideration of experience. Dewey moves away from defining art through its intrinsic properties and seeks to define aesthetic experience through the overall interactions one may have with the work. In introducing the reconciliation between …

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Lee Mingwei

Whether it is a one-on-one dining experience, or an installation dedicated to individuals mending clothes, Mingwei presents works that challenge the antiseptic museum paradigm. By placing these everyday actions within the museum settings, Mingwei wants people to ask questions about how such works fit within the allotted space. The participatory art brings individuals together to …

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Social Interstices

Drawn on Marxian language and repurposed by Nicolas Bourriaud in his text, Relational Aesthetics, the term social interstices refers to a space that facilitates human social interaction. Marx refers to the term interstice as a pocket of trading activity that stands outside the capitalist framework. Similarly, social interstice as Bourriaud uses it references a similar defiance …

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Test Site

With Test Site, German artist Carsten Holler supplants a gigantic slide as both a sculptural and interactive object within the museum. In an interview with Vincent Honoré, Holler discusses how the limited the use of the slide is in the everyday. When discussing his work, Holler explains his plans for expanding the installation to the …

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Collective Art Spaces

I was particularly interested in the Ruangrupa collective in Indonesia, which has recently celebrated 15 years in existence.  One of the projects that the collective encompasses is RURU Gallery, described as ” a contemporary art gallery opened by ruangrupa since 2008 to make room for the work of visual artists, writers, and young curators through six …

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Vacant Lot of Cabbages

In 1978, New Zealand artist Barry Thomas occupied a vacant lot in the city of Wellington, and through an act of ‘guerilla gardening’ transformed it into a cabbage patch. After owners had abandoned the lot, locals grew angry at the eyesore that the lot presented. Thomas and a group of his friends decided to plant …

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Matthieu Laurette

French artist Matthieu Laurette’s social interventions occur through engaging with notions of the spectacle. In his works (particularly the ongoing Apparitions), Laurette creates a public persona that is presented on various broadcasted shows ranging from newscasts to game shows. Most evident in his interventions are the inspirations to Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. In …

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Mark Dion

In creating sculptures and installations, artist Mark Dion attempts to gain knowledge through “things.” He outlines museums as a “window into the past.” This emphasis on the history of ideas stands strong in his works which explore how knowledge about the natural world transitioned over time. Through his art, he seeks to deconstruct various institutions …

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Dismaland

Along with fifty-eight other artists, Banksy led the construction of Dismaland, a rather dystopian riff on Disneyland that is marketed as “the latest addition to our chronic leisure surplus.” (Interestingly enough, legal representative from the Walt Disney Corporation are banned from the park.) Works include Banksy’s Cinderella recreates Princess Diana’s death, Maskull Lasserre’s Skeletal Merry-go-Round, …

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Johanna Billing

Swedish conceptual artist Johanna Billing discusses her collaborative efforts in stating, “When I invite people to perform within these complexes, which they often no longer have any practical connection to, they join me in trying to figure out the meaning or function of the institution — both historically and in the context of making the …

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Wochenklausur

Started in 1993, Wochenklausur is a Vienna-based artist collective that specializes in the orchestration of social interventions. The group actively utilizes participatory art to instigate improvements within communities. The creation of their works begins with a partnership with an art institution. In outlining their working practices, they write, “Through its work, WochenKlausur would like to …

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Une Journée dans la Rue

Aside from their 1963 show at the Paris Biennale, aptly titled “Le Labyrinthe,” Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) also produced “Une Journée dans la Rue” in 1966. As shown in the map (link below), the artists constructed a variety of activities meant to interrupt the daily commute of a Parisian walking the streets in …

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Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV)

From 1960 through 1968, a group of eleven opto-kinetic artists formed a collective in Paris. While the initial focus of the GRAV artists stemmed from experimenting with visual perception, the group’s works expanded to examine notions of spectator participation. The active involvement of the public became evident with art produced by Horacio Garcia Rossi, Julio …

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Non-Place

Termed by French anthropologist Marc Auge, non-place refers to “a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place” (78). These spaces often link individuals to sites of transit such as metro stations and airports. Other “non-places” may be spaces like shopping malls and sites of commerce …

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The Heidelberg Project

In building Detroit’s Heidelberg project, Tyree Guyton acts as an individual intervening in public space. Beginning as a series of painted houses on Heidelberg Street, the Project has since expanded to take up much of Detroit’s McDougall-Hall neighborhood. Houses covered in vibrant polka dots, bundles of stuffed animals clinging to siding, and whimsical found object …

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Psychogeography

Inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s concept of the flaneur (an individual who wanders the urban landscape with the intent of experience), Guy Debord elaborated upon the relationship between an individual and the interaction with a public environment. In his 1955 essay, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, Debord defines psychogeography as “the study of the precise …

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Paradox of Praxis I (Sometimes Doing Something Leads to Nothing)

One day in 1997, Francis Alys began traversing Mexico City with a large block of ice. Over a span of nine hours, Alys proceeded to push, and eventually kick, the ice block over the city’s roads and stairs. The subtitle of “Sometimes Doing Something Leads to Nothing” and Alys’ metaphor-ridden physical performance alludes to the …

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