Art as Social Practice

<p>With a focus on socially engaged art practices in the twenty-first century, this book explores how artists use their creative practices to raise consciousness, form communities, create change, and bring forth social impact through new technologies and digital practices.</p><p>Suzanne Lacy’s Foreword and section introduction authors Anne Balsamo, Harrell Fletcher, Natalie Loveless, Karen Moss, and Stephanie Rothenberg present twenty-five in-depth case studies by established and emerging contemporary artists including Kim Abeles, Christopher Blay, Joseph DeLappe, Mary Beth Heffernan, Chris Johnson, Rebekah Modrak, Praba Pilar, Tabita Rezaire, Sylvain Souklaye, and collaborators Victoria Vesna and Siddharth Ramakrishnan. Artists offer firsthand insight into how they activate methods used in socially engaged art projects from the twentieth century and incorporated new technologies to create twenty-first century, socially engaged, digital art practices. Works highlighted in this book span collaborative image-making, immersive experiences, telematic art, time machines, artificial intelligence, and physical computing. These reflective case studies reveal how the artists collaborate with participants and communities, and have found ways to expand, transform, reimagine, and create new platforms for meaningful exchange in both physical and virtual spaces.</p><p>An invaluable resource for students and scholars of art, technology, and new media, as well as artists interested in exploring these intersections.</p> <p>Foreword: The Medium is Not the (Only) Message… Introduction <b>Section 1: Seeds & Tools </b>1. Modest in Nature, We are All Lichen and other Lessons Learned with Carbon Sponge 2. Pandemic Makeover: Reimagining Place & Community in a Time of Collapse 3. Bio-Digital Pathways: Mushrooming Knowledge, Expanding Community 4. Valises for Camp Ground: Arts, Corrections and Fire Management in the Santa Monica Mountains 5. Cultivating Techno-Tamaladas <b>Section 2: Windows & Mirrors </b>6. A Human Atlas: Immersive Storytelling for the Twenty-first Century 7. Borderland Collective: In Practice and Dialogue 8. We Are Worth Everything: Survivors As Themselves 9. An Interview with Ari Melenciano 10. Making Politics: Engaged Social Tactics 11. Social Practice Artworks <b>Centerpiece </b>Decolonial Healing: In Defense of Spiritual Technologies <b>Section 3: Magical Machines </b>12. Space and Time: Science Fiction as an Imaginative Catalyst for Social Change 13. Witch-Plant-Machine: Speculative Histories and Planetary Justice 14. Cybernetic Loops and Fermented Technologies of Participatory Poetry: Reflections on the Kimchi Poetry Machine 15. Impossible Spaces and Other Embodiments: Co-constructing Virtual Realities 16. One Breath Poem: A Telematic Revolution <b>Section 4: Expansions </b>17. Community Building Through Collaboration 18. Online Intimacies and Artful Life in Turtle Disco Zoomshells 19. Community Accessible Archives; What You Leave, When You Leave 20. living liveness 21. Being in Between: Challenges of Art Science Collaborations <b>Section 5: Reimagination </b>22. PPE Portrait Project: Image, Ethics, Health 23. Can This Be a Community When You’re Trying To Sell Me A Luxury Watch? 24. Justice and Representation Within the Limits of Contemporary Photography 25. Technology of Touch: How Craft Can Lead to Social Change</p>