ABSTRACT

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.

PART I: Introduction  1. Expanding Our Collective Imagination Through Public Art and Social Practice  PART II: Activation  2. Towards a Public of ‘the Otherwise’  3. Japan’s Rural Art Festivals: The Echigo-Tsumari Paradigm  4. Shaking the Snow Globe and Changing the City  5. Political Art and Metaphoric Exchange  6. Gardens and Grains: Design Activations in the Public Realm  7. ACT: Activating City Transience  PART III: Social Justice  8. Art as Protest: The Forced Eviction of the Shijhou and Sa’owac Urban Indigenous Tribes in Taiwan  9. Participation Problematises: Together in Violence  10. As If: An Embodied Account  11. Quiet Gestures, Gift Exchange, and Public Formations: The Work of D.A.N.C.E. Art Club and Public Share  12. Surviving Institutionalised Care: Accessibility as Social Practice  PART IV: Memory and Identity  13. Suspended Memory: Ebbs and Flows in Attempts at Memorialising in Post-Apartheid South Africa  14. The Double Act of Flower Time  15. (In)famous: Contemporary Lessons from History’s Heroes  16. Public Art, Cultural Identity, and the River of Oblivion  17. Luanda’s Emotional Geography  18. The Imaginary Institution of Place: Notes on Art-led Place-Making as Aesthetic, Social, and Temporal Engineering  19. The Battle of Public Sculptures: On Three Sculptures in Hong Kong  20. Public Art, Gentrification, and the Preservation of Black and BrownUrban Identity: The Case of Little Haiti, Miami – an Interview with Muralist Serge Toussaint  PART V: Ecology  21. Digging in the World: Art and Emergent Forms for Living  22. Landscape, Eco-Arts Practice, and Digital Technology in the Public Art Realm  23. Changing Space  24. Ensemble Practices  25. Public Art Visions and Possibilities: From the View of a Practising Artist  26. A Compass Rose for the Anthropocene: New Maps for Old – the Art of Transforming Cultures for Sustainable Futures  27. In the Time of Art with Policy: The Practice of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison Alongside Global Environmental Policy Since the 1970s  28. The Harrisons’ Practice in the Context of Global Environmental Policy and Politics from the 1960s to 2019: A Timeline  PART VI: Mapping Social Change  29. Mapping Art in the Public Realm 2008–2018