Full 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.
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
Cameron Cartiere
Failure as Success: Sam Durant's Scaffold, Angela Two Stars' Okciyapi, and the conundrum of critique.
Erika Doss
On Monumental Failure: A conversation
Paul Farber and Kanyinsola Anifowoshe
Failing Well: Exploring the value of failure through the UK national roll out of Arts on Prescription
Frances Williams
There's always a story: Epic failings of the American percent-for-art model
Shelly Willis and Janet Zweig
Taking Inventory: digital public art collections and the challenge of physical distance
Lori Goldstein
Running across subsidence, following leaks: The ordinary failure of public art and public infrastructure services
Becky Shaw
Part 2
Failure of Participation
The Failure of Participation: the demos is in the detail
Anthony Schrag
We Thought We Were Going To Change The World! Socially engaged art as cruel optimism
Sophie Hope
Tarde de Sándwiches: The failure of participation in contemporary Cuban art
Celia Irina González Álvarez
How Intimate Public and Participatory Art Fails the City
Leon Tan
No impact on cultural participation? - An analysis of the objective of increasing and widening cultural participation in European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017
Louise Ejgod Hansen and Hans-Peter Degn
Public Art Ethics and Failure: A postcolonial perspective on failure and the Centre for Political Beauty
Anika Marschall
Dare to Fail: socially engaged public art and its challenges in contemporary China
Meiqin Wang
Epilogue: Reconsidering failure
Harriet Senie
References
Index
