Extending Issues
University of San Jorge
The ‘Shadow Pandemic’ of Gender-Based Violence: Activism Art Raises Awareness During a Global Crisis View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tanya Sharp
Influenced by the social movements of the late 1960s, social activism and art are inextricably linked. Public and activism art diverge where activism art is built on concepts of audience, relationships, communication, and political intention where public art is centered on “place” or “location” (Lacy, 1995). Historically public art is grounded on the principle that offering art accessibility, can solve societal issues, however, public art can’t heal those affected during volatile times such as a pandemic, war, or famine (Mlambo-Ngcuka, 2020). Through the lens of gender-based violence (GBV) during the ‘Shadow Pandemic,’ interviews, case studies and visual mapping methodologies are conducted, to consider new routes of community and avenues to heal so that the disparate elements of personal experiences, in times of crisis, collaborate to define a contemporaneous idea of public. By comparing three art campaigns across different sites and times addressing GBV, gender inequality, and the AIDS crisis, I argue that traditional advertising spaces and street art provide a viable alternative to public art and raise awareness about social issues and promote change. I further investigate how can an arts campaign provide access to resources and relief to communities? How can the creation of street art give a voice to the unheard and address those in need? How has the history of the U.S feminist movement informed activism art?
The Aesthetic and Sensory Pleasures of Consumption in Historical and Cultural Contexts: The Messy Mango View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Constance Kirker
In the Western philosophical tradition, Aristotle created a hierarchy of aesthetic beauty, prioritizing and privileging sight and sound, relegating taste, smell and touch to lower senses. Realizing the full pleasure potential of the process, even the performance, of consumption, however, necessarily relies on these lower senses. Boundaries of appropriate and proper eating behavior vary considerably outside of the Western tradition and in fact, can be set aside in a given context, on a picnic, for example. Traditionally South Asian food is consumed with one’s hands, an “uncivilized” “primal” or “childlike” process, lacking the “classical (read Western)” aesthetic principles of order, symmetry and balance (read neatness) In the narrative of his forgoing mangoes in later life because of its sensuality, for example, Mahatma Gandhi was acknowledging the power of those lower senses. Eaters of the best mangoes, fresh from the trees where they ripen naturally, most vividly recount the messy part of the process as the most pleasurable. What does a consumer miss when eating a mango with a fork?
Participatory Art in Spanish Context: Analysis of the Pamplona Encounters as an Antecedent View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dailey Fernández González
Participatory art practices can be understood as one of the most radical lines that have been reached in Western art under the banner of transforming society and repairing the social bond, in ways that are possible thanks to the experiences left by conceptualism, site-specific, activism, public art, relational art, as well as the thinking and criticism that has been configured through the so-called social and ethical turn, or pedagogical art. In Spain and other southern European countries, participatory art practices are still marginal and often depend on the commitment of artists and activists; but this reality began to diversify especially in the early 2000s, when the process of democratic normalization initiated in the late 1970s was already some years old. Even so, the experience of The Pamplona Encounters (1972) should be pointed out as an important reference for the inclusion of the participatory practices and experimentation. That international festival was centered on the idea of dissolving art into life through citizen participation, with an ephemeral, processual and subversive character in relation to the established order in the last years of the dictatorship. This paper is part of a doctoral thesis that focuses on the effects of cultural policies that have been implemented in recent years in Spain, the causes and peculiarities of the emergence of the collaborative and its derivation in the participatory, the reception of these artistic practices, the attention to participatory art practices that begins to manifest itself in the curatorship of art, among other issues of interest.
Featured Positive Portrayals of Women in Public Art View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chloe Berger
In recent public art ethics literature, people often consider reasons why monuments and memorials should be preserved, removed, or modified, with less consideration of what kinds of new works we should create. Moreover, most examples of racist or colonial commemorations that philosophers draw on only depict men, and this limited scope extends to their theoretical approaches as well, which often lack feminist and decolonial considerations. In this study, I first evaluate some existing public art ethics literature in relation to the work of feminist and decolonial philosophers, to demonstrate the importance of greater attention to women – including queer women, women of color, and indigenous women – in discussions of what sorts of works we ought to create or remove. Focusing on figural – as opposed to abstract – representations of women in public art, I argue that we should create works grounded in a positive evaluation of women, while also opposing sexist, heterosexist, racist, and colonial oppression. We ought to create these positive evaluations not only to create greater representation of women in public space and to allow people to engage with feminist and queer history, but also because these works are intrinsically valuable, insofar as they convey women’s moral worth. Given my focus on figural representations of women, I offer reasons why we should create these public positive evaluations of particular women, that is, why we should personalize our praise. Finally, I briefly outline some conditions a work may fulfill to be considered feminist or otherwise opposing oppression.
