During this session we will focus on participatory art practices that are often time invested in their surroundings, deeply rooted and in a dialogue with larger communities. For the first session, we will invite local artists and initiatives to explore different ways of engaging with communities through artistic processes.
More and more artists and cultural practitioners are engaging in collective practices that are de facto socially engaged and more concerned with the co-creation of knowledge, shared experiences and the possibilities that emerge. These practices reflect the leaderless, radical and grassroots protests that are gaining ground – protests that are more concerned with their transformative experiences than their demands.
In their essay For an Aesthetic of Encounters (2017), philosopher Baptiste Morizot and the art historian Estelle Zhong Mengual argue that "art not only transforms our perception of the world: it also transforms our way of utilizing the world, our way of understanding it and acting in it". However, and in order for arts to fulfill such a mission, an individual encounter needs to operate, meaning "a transformation of our ways of feeling, understanding, perceiving, acting". Inviting participants into the creative process, building a longstanding collaboration, working together for the realisation of an artwork is one of the ways to foster such an encounter.
Participatory art practices allow for the co-production of artworks and not only their passive reception, valuing the work for the relation it creates and not only some intrinsic properties.