The Charitable Relation (Foreword) (original) (raw)

Benefit-oriented Socially Engaged Art: Two Cases of Social Work Experiment

UNIVERSITY OF JYVÄSKYLÄ: JYVÄSKYLÄ STUDIES IN HUMANITIES 242, 2015

Over the past half century, numerous art practices have expanded the field of art production across disciplinary boundaries and become more involved with non-art social institutions and organizations. These practices are often undertaken beyond the conventional venues such as galleries and museums. Focusing on dealing with social and political issues, these practices depend on, and value, the collaborative participation of people in communities. This unprecedented tendency has changed all aspects of art making, perception and distribution. These practices together demonstrate a multiform and contingent nature. Under the umbrella term “socially engaged art”, there are a variety of projects that differ from each other based on their purposes and, consequently, working methods. This dissertation sets forth the concept of benefit-oriented socially engaged art (BOSEA). Based on in-depth case study of the Art for the Disabled Scheme, and the Art and Culture Companions, this dissertation develops a better understanding of benefit-oriented socially engaged art practices within the framework of socially engaged art and their position within the whole scene of contemporary culture and art. Benefit-oriented socially engaged art practices aim at bringing benefits to individuals and communities through art-based services. These practices are often ignored and excluded from art discussions due to their practical purposes and functional mechanisms. This research reveals that although situated on a fuzzy territory between art and non-art, between art and social work, benefit-oriented socially engaged art practices still embody aesthetic value. The blossom of these projects reveals a new thinking about the relationship between contemporary art and society—art is used as a service to enhance the well-being of people, and a new way for artists to adopt creativity for providing holistic solutions in order to make social change on the grassroots level. The study of benefit-oriented practices points to an open future for art, and reveals the possibility to synthesize different research paradigms into a more unified worldview based on new understanding of the function of art and artists. Keywords: benefit, socially engaged art, service, social disciplines, social work, aesthetic tension, artworld

Art For the Cause of Emerging Artist

Art philanthropy is an obscure concept in India, yet, last year(2014) ten prominent contemporary artists donated their works to support an artist residency association. This article tries to understand patronage art has received from erstwhile Maharajas and government's neglect towards cultural responsibility.

The Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm

2020

This multidisciplinary companion offers a comprehensive overview of the global arena of public art. It is organised around four distinct topics: activation, social justice, memory and identity, and ecology, with a final chapter mapping significant works of public and social practice art around the world between 2008 and 2018. The thematic approach brings into view similarities and differences in the recent globalisation of public art practices, while the multidisciplinary emphasis allows for a consideration of the complex outcomes and consequences of such practices, as they engage different disciplines and communities and affect a diversity of audiences beyond the existing 'art world'. The book will highlight an international selection of artist projects that illustrate the themes. This book will be of interest to scholars in contemporary art, art history, urban studies, and museum studies.

Social art in a material world (2013)

This paper was first presented at the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference in 2013. Selected parts of the paper have also been included in the 2015 book Art as Enterprise (IB Tauris). The paper re-orients the discussion about social practice in contemporary art to consider the economic and political drivers of this trend. Social practice in the arts has emerged as an increasingly dominant force in contemporary art over the last decade, with a particular escalation evident following the global financial crisis of 2008. There are numerous drivers for these developments, including; artists reacting against the commercialism of the contemporary art market; government funding and public policy agendas, particularly the idea of ‘the big society’; and the corporate social responsibility objectives of private sponsors. The relationship between art and money is clearly an important factor in each of these developments, however the discourse around social art practice tends to focus on the political and social efficacy of art, on the one hand, or the potential loss of aesthetic and critical value, on the other. This paper takes Slavoj Zizek’s critique of charity as a starting point to critically examine two social art projects with a community development agenda, No Longer Empty (USA) and Creative Spaces (Australia), considering how they engage with, and shed light on, social justice and economic inequalities produced within the art world.

Beneficence and contemporary art: when aesthetic judgment meets ethical judgment

The National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2007) establishes a working set of guidelines for the ethical conduct for research within Australian Universities. One of the primary principles relates to questions of “public good.” The question of public good comes under the principle of beneficence. Beneficence involves an ethical judgment about whether “the likely benefits of the research must justify any risks of harm or discomfort to the participants, to the wider community, or to both.” (National Statement, p. 13) The question of minimizing risk and discomfort becomes a key point of tension when artists become engaged in artistic research and their ‘research’ becomes subject to the guidelines of The National Statement. Driven by the aesthetics of the sublime, the avant-garde impetus demands that art produces discomfort and brings its audience into crisis. For artists this discomfort and crisis is precisely art’s benefit, whilst for an ethics committee such discomfort may be deemed an unacceptable risk. Here-in lies a conflict between the notion of beneficence as defined by the code and those recognized by the artistic community. It raises the question: What is the value of art to a society if it becomes so comfortable that it no longer provokes artistic shock? Through an examination of the work of socially engaged artists Amy Spiers and Catherine Ryan, this essay examines how artists reconfigure the notion of beneficence as a principle that incorporates provocation and discomfort. Keywords: artistic research, ethics, socially engaged art, beneficence.

"Re-structure: Art as Social Enterprise"

Proceedings of the 2014 Re-structure Conference, 2016

Art has begun to play a key role in the global development agenda, not only because of the aesthetic qualities of art, but also because artistic practice is intertwined with economic growth and social development. This is most evident in the global rise of so-called "creative industries". 1 The affinity of art with global economic and cultural development is both promising and problematic, and it is this tension that I will explore in this paper. I begin by discussing the relationship of art to the changing nature of public and private funding in the global economy, and I then present two case studies of art as social enterprise. These studies explore how artists are managing the multiple and at times conflicting demands of simultaneously pursuing economic, cultural and social goals in their artistic practices.

Art and Social Practice: An Imagination of Mutualism

The aim of this essay is to investigate how the symbiotic framework of art and social practice across disciplines and locations can facilitate an understanding of a transcultural perspective and an engagement with prescient art historical questions. It explores ideas of collaborative and cooperative methods of art making and mutual pedagogy through a case study of the Dialogue Interactive Artists Association (DIAA) in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, India. The essay critically discusses DIAA's successful intervening in the hierarchies that colonialism imposed through the binaries of Art (High) and Craft (Low) practices, and forming terminologies and methodologies of social practice through site-specific engagement and local socio-cultural histories. A 'rhizomatic system' is proposed to reimagine the relationship between art, craft, urban, rural, inclusion, exclusion, and a progressive emplacement of artistic selfhoods across practices and contexts.

Art and community: critical perspectives (Dossier Introduction)

estudoprévio: revista do centro de estudos de arquitectura,cidade e território da Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, 2019

This special issue of the journal Estudo Prévio is the result of presentations, ideas and exchanges that took place during the 2018 conference "Art, Materiality and Representation" organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute in collaboration with the British Museum and the Department of Anthropology at SOAS in London. Though the organising institutions and the venues where historically loaded sites of anthropological legacy, the event attracted researchers, practitioners and activists from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplinary traditions: visual and performing artists, designers, museologists, curators, art historians, architects, urbanists, as well as anthropologists and those locating themselves in transitioning, often undefined domains.