Community-based art, performance and dialogue

Drifting Bodies / Fluent Spaces, international meeting/conference and exhibition on walking arts, in collaboration between Lab2PT / UMinho - Made of Walking (VII) and the City of Guimarães - Portugal.
Below you can read the announcement of the open call for walking arts papers, posters, art projects, walkshops and walks, and for art works to be included in our meeting/conference and exhibition in Guimarães - Portugal, during July 2020.
We look forward to your participation.

Drifting Bodies / Fluent Spaces, encontro/conferência internacional e exposição sobre artes de caminhar, numa colaboração entre o Lab2PT / UMinho - Made of Walking (VII) e a Câmara Municipal de Guimarães - Portugal.
Abaixo, poderão encontrar o anúncio da abertura de chamada para artigos, posteres, projetos de arte, walkshops /caminhadas e obras de arte, sobre artes de caminhar, a serem incluídos no nosso encontro/conferência e exposição em Guimarães - Portugal, durante o mês de julho de 2020.
Aguardamos a vossa participação.

Originally published in:
The International Journal of Arts in Society, Volume 6, No. 2, pp. 111-20, available online at: http://ija.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.85/prod.757

The phenomenon of large-scale public art projects has gone viral. From intentional crop circles to illusionistic sidewalk paintings in many of the world’s urban tourist sites to choreographed flocks of sheep and rice paddies planted in imitation and emulation of classical paintings, these projects often reveal a sophisticated degree of communal organization and the expenditure of sometimes vast amounts of human energy and resources. The widespread distribution of videos about these often memetic and mimetic projects on YouTube and other digital media networks means that these projects are familiar to millions around the world and engender others. To what end?

In this article, Dr. Hipólito Rafael Chacón, Professor of Art History and Criticism at The University of Montana (USA), illustrates the rich gamut of projects that are currently documented online. He analyzes how these works resonate with traditions of land-based art known to art history and archeology, specifically how they relate to the land art, pop, and mass culture movements of the last quarter of the 20th century. Most importantly, he shows how their diffusion via electronic media is a revelatory commentary on a new and increasingly global culture.

This article proposes the term ‘site-situational’ art or performance as a meaningful shift beyond ‘site-specificity’ and as a way to develop forward-moving and relational understandings of place. While place falls prey to Western, modernist stereotypes of closed, territorial geographic systems, site-situational readings, radical forms of ‘recognition’ and ambulatory hermeneutics enable an understanding of place as a wandering signifier, a trickster figure, and an in-the-moment conversation between environments and living beings. Through an analysis of the 2009 Infecting the City performing arts festival in South Africa, the article links site-situational performance to situational understandings of identification in the context of migration and xenophobia. It connects the participatory creative resistance aspired to by the Situationists that transforms situations rather than just recognises them, to the potential mutuality that can be experienced when one recognises oneself in the face of a ‘foreigner’ as well as the potential culpability that accompanies pro-active recognition-on-the-run.

This report contains a thorough formal, and contextual analysis of an early series of performances by San Francisco-based conceptual artist Bonnie Ora Sherk (b. 1945). It investigates the series titled "Sitting Still I-III" (1970), which included a total of three live performances. Convergent points from art discourse, as well as contemporaneous sociopolitical concerns explicate the motivation of the series, and its cultural significance. Ultimately, the thesis resolves both the political, and poetic interpretations of the series through a detailed examination of the performance action: stillness.

The aim of this essay is to explore the emergence and implications of political graffiti during/after the Iranian revolution 1979 and the beginning of Iran-Iraq war, the cultural and psycho-social implications and the controversy surrounding US-Iran relations during/after the Iranian revolution in brief. Simultaneously I will also try and reflect on the different metaphorical/philosophical layers added to the film Persepolis by the film maker, and also would hint on the reasons for choosing a frame with political graffiti in Iran. The scope of my essay for the philosophical/metaphorical aspect would be limited to the single frame I've chosen from the movie. However, for the background of political graffiti in Iran I will most certainly explore outside of the movie.

Today, Forum Theater has become mainstream practice in Singapore. But from 1994 to 2004, the government tried to ban it. This article explores the political and economic dimensions of the birth, death, and re-birth of Forum Theater, focusing on the practice of The Necessary Stage and Drama Box.

This article engages critically with the normative framing of socially-engaged/collaborative art as a consensual/dissensual dichotomy. The main exponents of this position are Claire Bishop and Chantal Mouffe, and while there are important differences in how they theorise the relationship between art and politics, they share the view that consensual practices amount to a form of political abdication. This way of framing participatory practices that cross between art and activism gives rise to three significant problems however: one concerns the passive positioning of viewers/participants relative to the authorial autonomy of artist/artwork; the second concerns an inadequate understanding of power; and the third is an apparent inability to think consensus and dissensus together, i.e. as features of the same arena of practice. These issues are examined through reference to specific artistic practices, drawing on concepts from the literature on social and political power which are used in conjunction with Grant Kester’s work on dialogical aesthetics. The article argues for a more open and dialogic approach to studying the relationship between politics and aesthetics, thereby avoiding the trap of using artistic practices as illustrative cases in support of conclusions that have been reached before the analysis has even commenced.

Co-Edited with Dorothee Richter.

The curatorial project “social sculptures” took place in four different parts over one and a half years, the curatorial concept evolved through time as more participants became involved. An archive of shared interests was developed with the artists: Marina Belobrovaja, Ursula Biemann, Corner College, Jeremy Deller, eggerschlatter, Finger (evolutionäre zellen), forschungsgruppe f, Heinrich Gartento,  Hanswalter Graf, Fritz Haeg, Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller, Michael Hieslmair & Michael Zinganel, interpixel, Martin Kaltwasser & Folke Köbbeling, San Keller, Pia Lanzinger, Michaela Melián, metroZones, Peles Empire, Frédéric Post, Public Works, Alain Rappapor,  raumlaborberlin, RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co), Oliver Ressler, Shedhalle, Erik Steinbrecher, support structure (Celine Condorelli and Gavin Wade), Szuper Gallery, tat ort, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Markus Weiss. Their contributions to the archive questioned the idea of community, and was exhibited at the White Space, Zürich and secondly at Kunstmuseum Thun.

“Social Sculpture” – the German notion even downplays this term as “Soziale Plastik” was coined by Joseph Beuys, as new form of creating art, and influencing society, his expanded notion of the area of the arts was initiated by the confrontation with Fluxus practices, when he hosted one of the first Fluxus Festivals in Düsseldorf.

In considering the notion of social sculptures, this issue of On Curating reflects on the projects encountered by the Postgraduate Programme in Curating, and explores this topic into an international context of artists working with social change, housing, politics, food and economics. The range of interviews and essays presented are reflective of the dynamic range of practices that exist in the social sphere. Many of the projects presented exist beyond the art circuit, and enter the social consciousness of the spaces they encounter.


With contributions from Grandhotel Cosmopolis Augsburg, Marina Belobrovaja,Søren Berner, Ursula Biemann, Michael Birchall, Dario & Mirko Bischofberger, Fabrizio Boni & Giorgio de Finis, Eyal Danon, Altes Finanzamt, San Keller, Beta Local, Oliver Ressler,Planting Rice,Dorothee Richter andMartin Schick, featuring works by Jeanne van Heeswijk, San Keller and Szuper Gallery.

Interviews conducted by students in the Postgraduate Programme in Curating: Nadja Baldini, Silvia Converso, John Kenneth Paranada, Eleonora Stassi, Agustina Strüngmann, Adriana Domínguez Velasco and Dina Yakerson

This essay engages collaborative art projects in a field of settler/indigenous relations: drumming and performances of self at a Michigan language revitalization symposium, Native Women Language Keepers; Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore’s iconic video performance work at the Canadian pavilion of the Venice Biennial; and the Australian community cultural development project Ghost Nets, which emphasizes relationships while cleaning up fishing debris off beaches. The essay argues for reading strategies that acknowledge relational living, in the flow of history, speaking from webs of more than one voice, and attending to gaps.

The internationally known phenomena of Slovak conceptual art is not only the case of Július Koller, Alex Mlynárčik and Stano Filko. As I show in my study it could be seen as the compact movement between 1963-1993, closely attached to the urban and cultural growth of Slovak capital city Bratislava, connecting not less than 30 underground artists. This text was presented as keynote speach during the international conference entitled "Could We Speak of Bratislava Conceptualism?" organized by Kunsthalle Bratislava (November 2nd, 2015). The text book which includes all the papers, round table and transcripts of discussions is published in 2021 by The Peter Michal Bohúň Gallery in Liptov Region and Kunsthalle Bratislava and can be ordered through www.galerialm.sk.

This MA thesis combines philosophy and communication studies in a double investigation of, first, how to justify 'dialogic democracy' (which is a redevelopment of deliberative and participatory branches in democracy theory) as a viable basis for communication scholarship and practice, in particular within the Communication for Social Change paradigm (CFSC). Second, the thesis explores how dialogic democracy theory is put into practice when planning, implementing, and evaluating the so-called ROAR project designed by the author and conducted in 2010 and 2011 in rural Malawi, East Africa. ROAR is an abbreviation for Remediating Orature through Action Research.

After conducting an initial ethnographic investigation on media use and everyday storytelling practices in two villages communities in 2010, the author returned to the same area in 2011 to engage local storytellers and other community members in the ROAR project. By hosting inclusive dialogues with broad and diverse groups of community members, the ROAR experiment began by identifying, discussing, and prioritizing local social and political concerns. The identified issues were then brought into a workshop context where local and primarily female storytelling performers were encouraged to use their communicative skills to take one of the issues to a wider public. This was done by working out and recording a 'folktale for social change' for community radio.

The aim of ROAR was thus to integrate existing cultural practices and communicative resources present in this specific context to sustain public sphere deliberation, especially on the local level. Based on the research findings the thesis concludes that traditional storytelling remains a valuable communicative resource in Malawian rural village settings. Supported theoretically by the dialogic democracy perspective, it is furthermore assessed that projects such as ROAR are capable of assuming a central role in sustaining socially well-informed and thereby increasingly just form of democratic deliberation.

From a practical perspective, the ROAR experiment was inspired by ongoing Malawian NGO initiatives working with communication, culture, and development. In contrast to most of these initiatives, however, ROAR is radically oriented towards a complete shift of ownership to local village stakeholders. In this way, ROAR works as a pilot for self-sustaining and participatory content-creation for local media to be replicated in future projects sharing similar aims.

The examination panel wrote: "[T]he thesis is an excellent academic performance. The work is very independent and original in its ambitious aim of integrating democratic theory, communication theory and action-research, and the aim is largely fulfilled. The thesis amply demonstrates fulfilment of the academic aims of philosophy and communication, it is exceptionally strong in its conceptual work, producing very interesting research topics from the literature review and delivering an interesting, well planned and implemented case study with nuanced reflections and analysis of the difficult pathway towards achieving dialogic democracy."

An essay in the companion book to the exhibition EN MAS: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean, Farewell, Farewell: Carnival, Performance and Exhibition in the Circum-Atlantic Economy of the Flesh, bids farewell to traditional definitions and representations of Carnival in the Americas in general, and the Caribbean in particular, predicated upon the etymology of Farewell to the Flesh (Carne Levare). Instead, the essay reinsert flesh at the center of the debate about this unique circum-atlantic performance that is Carnival. The first section elicits a modern theory of Carnival in the Americas by introducing a novel etymythology of Carnival as Chariot of the Sea (Carrus Navalis). It asks: "What became of Carnival during the crossing of the Middle Passage and following the experience of slavery and colonization in the Americas?". A second section follows closely the eponymous exhibition I curated for Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans by Circumambulating the 2014 Caribbean Carnival season during which myself and collaborator Krista Thompson commissioned performances to 9 artists in 7 different Caribbean cities: Nicolás Dumit Estévez at Santiago de los Treinta Caballeros (Dominican Republic); Christophe Chassol around Fort-de-France (Martinique) ; Marlon Griffith in Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago); Charles Campbell and Ebony Patterson in Kingston (Jamaica); Cauleen Smith in New Orleans; Lorraine O'Grady in New York (USA); Hew Locke in London (UK); John Beadle in Nassau (The Bahamas). Through close descriptions and evocations, I show how the various strategies deployed by the artists circumvent carnival altogether. In a third and final section I call for a reinsertion of Carnival within the counter-history of the birth of the museum and begin to suggest ways to expand upon the exhibitionary complex through various curatorial strategies.

Depuis les années 1960, le mouvement communautaire québécois a œuvré pour la justice et les droits des personnes parmi les plus vulnérables de la société. Il a contribué de façon décisive à la reconnaissance et à l’interReconnaissance de divers groupes minorisés. Ses actions de soutien, de conscientisation, de mobilisation contre les différentes formes d’inégalité, de marginalisation et de discrimination, ont changé la face du paysage social et proposé une vision plus inclusive de la société québécoise. C’est ce que racontent plus de deux cent trente acteur.es-témoins provenant des secteurs femmes, immigration, LGBT, santé mentale et handicap, de même que des artistes ayant accompagné le mouvement et, particulièrement, ses actions liées aux droits de la personne. Quelles furent, depuis la Révolution tranquille, les idées et les actions les plus marquantes ? Comment se sont déployées les mobilisations les plus significatives et les plus porteuses ? Comment se sont croisées au sein des divers secteurs, les préoccupations, les idées phares, les stratégies, les alliances et les résistances ? Quels liens établir entre les enjeux qui se présentaient au moment de la Révolution tranquille et ceux qui sont au cœur de la société actuelle ? Comment les créations artistiques ont-elles contribué aux luttes et pénétré notre imaginaire collectif ? C’est à la rencontre d’une mémoire plurielle imbriquée dans les transformations sociales les plus profondes du Québec que nous convient les auteur.es de cet ouvrage ainsi qu’à une réflexion de fond sur la force de l’action collective.

We are currently seeking proposals for a stream called "From Socially Engaged Art to Socially Engaged Humanities?: Art, Research, and Social Engagement" at the 2022 London Conference in Critical Thought at Birkbeck College, University of London.

The deadline for submissions is March 18, 2022.

"This publication is the first manual for the inter-religious dialogue in the youth work. In the youth-friendly way it presents the theoretical basis for this dialogue, good examples, sample scenarios, lists what's important to remember and what are the potential reasons of conflicts. What one shall consider while organizing such an event: from the gender sensitivity issues to the calendar or the dietary needs.
An important aspect of this book is also that it has been written (and the concept for this book has been founded) by the representatives of youth faith-based organizations which had worked in a close cooperation, so this book has been an inter-religious dialogue already in the process of writing.

Published in 2008 by the European Youth Forum in the framework of the 2008 - European Year for Inter-cultural Dialogue."

Community-based theatre has been a key element of the peace building strategies deployed in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Local, national and international political institutions and NGOs have supported an unprecedented level of ‘community drama’ activity in the name of such interventionist agendas as social regeneration, conflict transformation, educational outreach and cross-border development. Community and arts organisations have applied a wide range of performance practices in their attempts to facilitate these outcomes.

This article will discuss the findings of detailed case studies on the work of two organisations: The Playhouse, based in Northern Ireland, and Upstate Theatre Project, based in the Republic of Ireland. The Playhouse and Upstate Theatre are both located in towns close to the border, and this article will focus on their cross-border work The intention is to explore the relationship of their applied theatre practice to the policies of conflict transformation, and to analyse the praxis of Upstate and The Playhouse with regard to the interplay of public policy, organisational culture and ‘grass-roots’ participation. This analysis will focus on the various concepts of identity deployed at these three levels, teasing out some of the complexities implicit in the relationship of public discourse to lived experience and praxis.

This is a series of collages that intend to evoke the implicating concepts of interculturality: respect, sense of community/ sense of belonging, identity, prudence. These visuals are  means of communication of a broader dialogue between myself, as the author and the public audience in a direct attempt  to apply the concept of  social didactics of interculturality that I have coined in the project Intercultural Cardboard Press  conceived as a general strategy of mass communication with specific pedagogical proposes (Symbology of Interculturality, Joyce Sanchez, 2013).  For this series I prefer to use the term "visual didactics of interculturality"  which helps to specify the type of means of communication I intend to communicate with.

This chapter relates to the demographic changes in contemporary Japanese society and examines how discussions concerning age and generational issues occur in the Japanese contemporary art world. The paper includes analyses of two art projects that address issues of generations as a theme and by using an "artist as ethnographer" approach.

La mostra I Malus. Una storia della mela a cura degli artisti Caretto|Spagna nasce dal desiderio di mettere in relazione la realtà contadina e artigianale, la conoscenza ed esperienza degli appassionati pomologi e dei produttori locali della comunità di Let Eat Bi - Il Terzo Paradiso in terra biellese con la sensibilità, gli interessi e le pratiche degli artisti contemporanei...

21. yüzyılda Avrupa ülkelerindeki, Amerika’daki ve Türkiye’deki bienallerde, sergilerde ve
sokaklarda sıkça örneklerine rastlanan katılımcı ve ilişkisel sanat örnekleri, sanatın geleneksel özelliklerini kullanmaz. Katılımcı ve ilişkisel çalışmalar, geleneksel sanat anlayışındaki gibi, izleyiciye tamamlanmış sanat çalışmasını sunmak yerine, izleyiciyle, sanat çalışmasının ve sanatçının iletişime geçmesini amaçlar. Bu çalışmada, sanatın geleneksel olarak kamuya sunulma şeklinin nasıl başladığı, müzelerin oluşma süreci, kamusal olarak nitelenen müzelerin kamusallık kavramına uygun olup olmadığı, müzelere yönelik eleştirilerin hem sanatçılar hem kamudaki diğer bireyler tarafından nasıl başlatıldığı ve bu eleştirilerden sonraki süreç araştırılmıştır.

Esta propuesta, orientada a explorar lo social como aquello caracterizado por su conflictividad y no por su consensualidad, parte de la obra Them (2007) del artista polaco Artur Zmijewski, que reunió cuatro grupos representativos de la sociedad polaca a las que se invitaba a interactuar sin límites, durante varios días, sobre las representaciones políticas que habían decidido les identificaría. Proyectado como un laboratorio participativo y artístico en el que jugar los conflictos e interacciones identitarias y culturales de la sociedad, la obra invita a reflexionar sobre el modo en que los imaginarios operan en el espacio público, el valor conflictual en la constitución de las comunidades, la importancia o irrelevancia de las guerras culturales por el relato y la reapropiación de símbolos. Por descontado, también del papel del arte y el artista en relación a la sociedad y la política y en general a la pregunta por la importancia de la conflictividad y la confrontación en el reto de imaginar espacios comunitarios, democráticos y emancipadores.

Figure 2224 was a site-related performance that was produced for IdentityLab and gallery DEPO in Istanbul 20 May 2016, an essay about is to read in the book "Between Places".

Between Places is an anthology compiling reflections about how identity is made and performed through the movement of the self and/or experiences of places under transformation. Parts of the book is directly or indirectly relating to the artistic research project IdentityLab that was initiated by Cuguoğlu and Ewerlöf and was executed in Sweden and Turkey in 2016.

Edited by Naz Cuguoğlu and Susanne Ewerlöf
Contributors: Fikret Atay, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Ferhat Özgür, Katarina Pirak Sikku, Liv Strand, Can Sungu and Lisa Torell.
Design by Erik Månsson

Exchanging Notes on Identity & Places
Susanne Ewerlöf, Naz Cuguoglu, Liv Strand and Can Sungu, p.8

Figure 2224
Lisa Torell p.34

Badjelántta Luottat(Traces from the Land Above)
Katarina Pirak Sikku, p.44

Geography, Migration & Dressing Policy
Ferhat Özgur, p.54

Conversation with Fikret Atay
Susanne Ewerlöf, NazCuguoglu & Fikret Atay, p.62

Revolutions break out on ships & utopias are lived on islands
Hera Büyüktasçyan, p.68

This is a concertina booklet published on the occasion of The Great Goat Milking and Honey Rendering at the Royal Ontario Museum and MKG127, Toronto. The events took place in 2015 and 2016. The artist thanks The Graham family and the Toronto Arts Council for its support for this project. The project was co-produced by Big Pond Small Fish. Other events from this goat milking cycle have been produced at Remai Modern, Dunlop Art Gallery, and Brook University.

This paper outlines the author's process of creative collaboration with the Dumagat indigenous peoples community in Dingalan, Aurora and the Aurora Artist Residency Program and Space (AARPS) Collective, in making and presenting the "Adow ne Domaget 2020 KKK - Kuwento, Kultura at Kalusugan sa Katutubong Komunidad,"1 radio program-festival during COVID-19 lockdown in the Philippines. In the course of the discussion, she will provide insights on the role of an immersive curatorial process and the creative impulse in reimagining places, moments and acts of gathering and collective action, in bringing out the stories and the voice of the community, in the time of lockdown, distance and forced isolation.

In Northern Ireland, as elsewhere, there are tensions between the aesthetics of professional and applied theatre. Specifically, it is harsh but not inaccurate to say that many Irish practitioners and policy makers believe that a lot of the participatory theatre of the last ten years has been a waste of large amounts of money on overambitious and incompetently executed productions. Alternatively, some practitioners and organisations that continue to promote the social and political value of applied theatre are retreating from the traditional defence of 'process over product' and placing inappropriate pressures on inexperienced, untrained and unpaid community performers to delliver performances on a par with professional theatre, without anywhere near the time and resources available to a professional production. Meanwhile, the sectarian social and political structures of Northern Ireland (such as regional and educational segregation) remain largely unchanged since the end of the Troubles. Nonetheless, outside Belfast at least, community-based performances seem to attract audiences as large and enthusiastic, if not more so, than professional theatre productions. In this context, questions of aesthetics are crucial to the continued relevance or survival of applied theatre: how can we assess the function of applied theatre in a post-conflict society in the absence of structural social change? How can we justify funding support for applied theatre when the primary evaluation models revolve around loosely defined concepts of 'artistic excellence' and 'empowerment'? Is a new aesthetic framework possible, whereby applied theatre practice and research can draw validity from the responses of specific community audiences within specific cultural contexts, and continue to further knowledge internationally?

This study reports on the activities of the improvisation-based project TWIG 'Together We Integrate Growth', which developed as a community initiative to facilitate ecological awareness through creative activities. It analyses the TWIG Project as a model for practices of social, mental and natural ecology, as defined by Felix Guattari (2000) and in terms of its ability to use improvisation as a method for developing individual bodily perception and generating community interest in conservation of the local environment. Drawing parallels between TWIG's improvisatory programme and Michel de Certeau's notion of 'play' as an act of political resistance, this article suggests that ecological practice necessarily engages multiple aspects of individuals, their communities and the surrounding environment.

The title of the current special issue of FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism is taken from the eponymous “Reflection Cycle” organized in October and November 2018 at the Sullivan Galleries of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Learning Art and Resistance from the South was embedded in the show Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas. Curated by Bill Kelley Jr., the exhibition assembled a significant quantity and variety of contemporary, critical, and community-based art practices from different Latin American countries, as well as Latin/Latinx artists based in the United States. All of the artists chosen for this show have developed collaborative, participatory, relational, and socially engaged art projects. This Reflection Cycle focused on the extremely rich artistic heritage of Latin America, which has grown out of resistance to historical and contemporary social, economic, political, and environmental oppression. In South and Central America, artists have often been predecessors of practices that, later, are touted in North America and Europe as new and innovative, hardly receiving credit for their long contributions. In recognition of this history, this discussion series opened space for artists and researchers to discuss their practices on their own terms, and has created an opportunity for the SAIC community to learn from this dialogue. This issue is a continuation of this discussion, broadening the vision enunciated in those initial dialogues to address broader paradigms of resistances from the South.