Feb 15th 2011

The ability to occupy the city, to make oneself visible, to address and mobilize a public, has been drastically diminished as a result of encroachments on public space under neoliberal programs of urbanization. What would it mean to insist on the public function of art today? As opposed to traditional conceptions of public art as work that occupies or constructs physical spaces and addresses preexisting audiences, Rosalyn Deutsche has argued for the necessity of artistic practices that actively constitute a public “by engaging people in political discussion or by entering a political struggle.” In recent years, a growing number of artists have produced work that not only calls for new forms of participation in public space, but also demands a critical reconsideration of the function of speech within those spaces. Calling attention to the linguistic constitution of collective subjectivity, this work sets out to transform networks of atomized and disembodied communication into conditions for the articulation of alternative forms of political identification. My talk will address writings and performances by Vito Acconci, Andrea Fraser, Sharon Hayes, Adrian Piper and Paul Chan.

Talk by Chad Elias.

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