Headshrink Public Art examines the question: “Social sculpture?”

Location: Institut für Kunst im öffentlichen Raum, RONDO, Marienplatz 1/1, 8020 Graz, and other sites

Schedule: starting 19 June 2013, intermittent intervals over the year

"Art in public space" is being put on the couch.

Headshrink Public Art is the title of a regular new series of lectures to be held by the Institute for Art in Public Space Styria between May and November 2013 examining the current situation of the now established art form of "social sculpture".

The historic significance of "social sculpture" is closely intertwined with a history that is both political and artistic, ranging through the 20th century in its entirety and raising fundamental issues about the relationship between politics and aesthetics. "Social sculpture" comes into existence through language, images, symbols, communication and a high level of organisation, making possible different forms of participation in artistic activities. "Social sculpture" establishes a field of tensions between the claim on artistic autonomy and art as a collective expression in community activities. Is public space accessed and perceived differently as a result? Will a new distribution take place in the way it is ordered in sensory terms? How is the relationship between politics and aesthetics determined on the basis of "social sculpture"? What effects do social crises and restorative tendencies have on this artistic demand for public participation? Is public art meaningful?

In the world of today "social sculpture" is no longer being created by artists, it already exists. One consequence of this among others is the irony-free exhibition of social movements as a political reality in art spaces. What the playful identification of art and life have achieved as a Utopia of social change can be found today beyond art, for example in the generic "social networks", in the political "occupy-movement", in the technology of cloud computing employed at computer centres, in virtual money transactions within milliseconds and influencing in a concrete economical way the social conditions of life.

Prominent international personalities from the fields of art, architecture, art criticism, political theory, philosophy and design will be invited to Graz to provide a discursive overview of the three fundamental and constituting terms art – public – political on the contextual basis of "social sculpture".

Commitments

19.06.2013 Christoph Schäfer, Margit Czenki, Hamburg, artists

03.07.2013 Sana Tamzini, Tunis, Directrice du Centre National d'Art Vivant de Tunis, Ministère de la Culture

17.07.2013 metahaven, studio for design and research, Amsterdam, cancelled 

25.09.2013 Christoph Menke, Berlin, professor for philosophy, Frankfurt/Main

09.10.2013 Dellbrügge & de Moll, Berlin, artists

06.11.2013 Christina Jauernik, Simon Oberhammer, Architect Studio Tschapeller, Vienna

14.02.2014 Helmut Draxler, Berlin, professor for art theory and mediation, Academy of Art, Nuernberg

RONDO: