Chalmers Conferences, Transvaluation: Making the world matter

Performative Art in Urban City Centres: Navigating the terrain of art making and value systems in public space
Marika Hedemyr

Last modified: 2015-08-18

Abstract


This paper outlines, from an artist/practitioner’s perspective, the terrain in which to balance artistic autonomy and how to make a difference when creating performative art in urban city centres. The autonomy of art and its capacity to influence political discussions is an ambiguous notion. Art is considered a “free zone” for critique, but discussions seldom reach outside the art context. The artist has to balance the commercialisation of all performative expressions in public space, the cultural and economic capital, and the artistic processes as tools for art making, urban development, and research. The issues are examined in a Swedish context and Let’s meet in Göteborg, a site-specific audiowalk I created in 2014, is used to bounce off questions and dilemmas of how artistic “knowledge production” about urban locations can be shared and contribute to society at large.

Keywords


Public space; performative art; value-systems; artistic research; urban development

References


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