The Failures of Public Art and Participation
Preview
Book Description
This collection of original essays takes a multi-disciplinary approach to explore the theme of failure through the broad spectrum of public art and social practice.
The anthology brings together practicing artists, curators, activists, art writers, administrators, planners, and educators from around the world to offer differing perspectives on the many facets of failure in commissioning, planning, producing, evaluating, and engaging communities in the continually evolving field of art in the public realm. As such, this book offers a survey of currently unexplored and interconnected thinking, and provides a much-needed critical voice to the commissioning of public and participatory arts. The volume includes case studies from the UK, the US, China, Cuba, and Denmark, as well as discussions of digital public art collections.
The Failures of Public Art and Participation will be of interest for students and scholars of visual arts, design and architecture interested in how art in the public realm fits within social and political contexts.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of contributors
Introduction
Cameron Cartiere and Anthony Schrag
Part 1
Failure of the Process
- Failure of Process: considering permanent works in an impermanent time
- Failure as Success: Sam Durant’s Scaffold, Angela Two Stars’ Okciyapi, and the conundrum of critique.
- On Monumental Failure: A conversation
- Failing Well: Exploring the value of failure through the UK national roll out of Arts on Prescription
- There’s always a story: Epic failings of the American percent-for-art model
- Taking Inventory: digital public art collections and the challenge of physical distance
- Running across subsidence, following leaks: The ordinary failure of public art and public infrastructure services
- The Failure of Participation: the demos is in the detail
- We Thought We Were Going To Change The World! Socially engaged art as cruel optimism
- Tarde de Sándwiches: The failure of participation in contemporary Cuban art
- How Intimate Public and Participatory Art Fails the City
- No impact on cultural participation? - An analysis of the objective of increasing and widening cultural participation in European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017
- Public Art Ethics and Failure: A postcolonial perspective on failure and the Centre for Political Beauty
- Dare to Fail: socially engaged public art and its challenges in contemporary China
- Epilogue: Reconsidering failure
Cameron Cartiere
Erika Doss
Paul Farber and Kanyinsola Anifowoshe
Frances Williams
Shelly Willis and Janet Zweig
Lori Goldstein
Becky Shaw
Part 2
Failure of Participation
Anthony Schrag
Sophie Hope
Celia Irina González Álvarez
Leon Tan
Louise Ejgod Hansen and Hans-Peter Degn
Anika Marschall
Meiqin Wang
Harriet Senie
References
Index
Editor(s)
Biography
Cameron Cartiere is a Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (Vancouver, Canada). She is the author of RE/Placing Public Art, co-author of The Manifesto of Possibilities, and co-editor of The Practice of Public Art (with Shelly Willis), The Everyday Practice of Public Art (with Martin Zebracki), and The Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm (with Leon Tan)
Anthony Schrag is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Policy and Arts Management at Queen Margaret University (Edinburgh, Scotland). He is an artist and researcher and the central focus of his work examines the role of art in participatory and public contexts, with a specific focus on social conflict, agonism and ethics. He has published numerous papers and produced social practice projects both nationally and internationally.