Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

In recent years there is an expanding field of various forms of activities at the intersection between art and education that explicitly elide the regulated frameworks and, in exchange, practice experimental formats through more horizontal processes of dialogue and inter-relation with the public and the surroundings (Bishop, 2012). These art mediation practices are part of what is called the ‘educational turn in the arts’ (O’Neill & Wilson, 2010). Mediation involve both educators and artists as well as curators and other different partners in the development of public programmes, projects and activities in museums and art centres around the world. In this light art mediation is seen as a critical practice (Sternfeld, 2013), but are these practices really democratic, emancipatory and pluralistic, or rather an instrument as part of an agenda towards consensual politics and reproduction of social and cultural standards (Mörsch, 2014: 159)? The tension between democratization of culture and cultural democracy, and between the individual and the collective are central in these practices (Bonet & Négrier, 2018). We explore how we can describe art mediation as experimental and critical practices that create ‘the public’ (Mouffe, 2008). With this research we want to gain insight into how these practices develop artistic and educational processes and tactics of mediation (in Belgium). We present the provisional findings of the first part of the research, namely the results of the literature study and the first depth-interviews with key informants in the field.