What is to be done? Arts Role in Rebuilding Associational Life

Description

In this paper, we explore artists' responses to the significant impact of what has now become referred to as the polycrisis. The prolonged adoption of neoliberal economic and political ideologies on public life by a series of UK governments. The embrace of free-market capitalism, characterised by limited government intervention, deregulation, privatization, and reduced public spending, has notably eroded civil society and transformed urban landscapes. This shift has exposed massive inequalities, stifled economic growth, and contributed to a dangerous democratic decline (Jordan and Hewitt, 2022), all while exacerbating the accelerating crisis of climate change.

Our aim is to ask “Can arts and culture catalyse a shift in focus, not through inclusion in conventional design and planning initiatives, but by redefining the essence of the 'social' within the city? “ We introduce a brief history of art and its relationship to public and urban spaces - outlining art's trajectory as permanent public art to its temporary engagements with urban space, which includes social art practices based on dialogical processes and intervention as well as the production of counter public spheres.

We then explore the social and political aspects of space, leaning on Leverbe. We look to Braidotti, Berant and Latour to help us understand the temporal, entanglement of art, space and society. We utilise their thinking to try to disrupt the process of how culture is set up to reproduce itself within neoliberalism.

Finally we share two examples of our recent art projects which are predicated on what not to do, in other words methods and responses that purposefully avoid reproducing a neoliberal solution based response to social lacks.

Thus we attempt to:
1. describe art practice as an integral part of our social life - as a social process, art is intertwined with the idea of living and being together, art reflects on the way we live together and at the same time informs the future of how we live together.
2. explain how art and artists do this is in context of neoliberalism and advanced capitalist which is by rebuilding associational life.
3. explore how the production of art can disrupt the process of how culture is set up to reproduce itself within neoliberalism by reassembling and disassembling the social and recognising the glitch as an opportunity to act within flattened structures of social organisation by flattened we mean that are setup to loop back to producing the same outcomes with innovative tweaks.

Period	27 Jun 2024
Held at	City, University of London, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	International