Social Practice is not necessarily a discrete genre of art, but a way to approach a variety of art and non-art disciplines including sculpture, performance, theatre, dance, activism, city planning, poetry, journalism and more. A Social Practice approach opens up a project or artwork to be participatory for the subjects or audience members. Social Practice as a genre of art is used as a practical way to denote conventional artistic opportunities, places, and schools of thought. It is also utilized as a genre for the development of a larger canon that investigates and historicizes the evolving concepts and movements of Social Practice.
- Adam Carlin
- Adam Carlin
Art and Social Practice is an artistic form that manifests from lived experiences. Using art as a catalyst for relational engagement, it addresses the social, political, cultural and ecological discourses of our time. Decentralizing the role of art, artists act as facilitators for meaningful exchanges through collaborative processes, creative reciprocal actions, and interpersonal dialogues. It critiques conventional aesthetic production by taking art to wider audiences and communities, enabling diverse forms of critical thinking.
As an artist, it allows me to employ autoethnographic approaches to explore my own identity. It not only asks questions but also imagines collective resolutions through tangible and intangible human capacities.
- Anupam Singh
Art and Social Practice is not a specific style or movement but a medium which is constantly evolving. It’s a creative, process-based medium ingrained in the concept of communication, human relations & interaction, re-looking & re-thinking aspects or issues relevant to time, geography, local history, politics, ecology, culture and economics in a society. The outcome of the project is diverse and emphasized on shared ownership between the artist and the community at large.
- Anuradha Pathak
Art and Social Practice is a Master of Fine Art program at Portland State University. There the students endeavor to engage a public with meaningful interaction creating an opportunity to claim those activities, and the results of those activities, as artwork.
-Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr.
I strive to understand what it is that I do. What is a socially engaged practice? And what is the role of performativity within my public practice? For me, the answer shifts year to year, like a migrant. Below is the definition that I am currently working with. The one constant in my ongoing reflection is that my practice remains a riverbed of rock that holds an ever-changing wild river of thought:
A socially engaged, public performance practice is the site-specific embodiment of urgent social issues through considered human gesture, such as conscious walking, ethically made and generously shared with a community as a form of diagnostic, collective, poetic portrait, freely offered for aesthetic appreciation and meaningful reflection, ultimately seeking a socially transformative, cultural experience.
-Ernesto Pujol
Social practice is an interweaving of life and art together. It focuses on social engagement, participation, co-creation, human relationships, and values the process and product with equal importance. As with all forms of art it may not have a purpose but commonly projects aim to catalyze change through shared experience.
-Eric John Olson
An approach to art that is created with & for a public and is responsive to, and motivated by, the context & community in which that public exist. There is a focus on shared authorship & co-creation of the work throughout the process, in contrast to the common way of making art where the artist is at the center. It blurs the line between producers & no- producers of culture therefore challenging inherent structures of access & power in the world.
-Kimberly Sutherland
People ask me all of the time, "What is social practice?". There is no one definition. It is not one thing. It is a multitude of "things" and it is evolving. Here are some thoughts on what it means to me at the moment in the context of my art making.
Social practice is relational art. It is situational. It is collaboration-full. It unfolds between people. Or between people and the rest of the world. There is space and there is time and there is the world. Together they form the collaboration. Social practice is led by questions and curiosities. It may be driven by perceived injustices or discontent, beauty or humor. Sometimes there is physical evidence of the direct work and other times it is only memory or reflection. For many artists and audiences, it is the experience that is the art. It is up to the artist to shape how the story gets told.
Social practice breaks down the artist/artwork - gallery/viewer model and engages broad and often unexpected audiences in the making of the work. Social practice artists engage a multitude of forms from performance, to object making, from writing, to walking, canoeing, eating, educating. Almost all that we do as humans moving through the world is social practice. It is how we curate or reflect upon the moment or series of moments that transforms being-ness from everyday action to art. Aesthetics and execution of an idea shape and define social practice as an art form. Social practice artists expect the audience to help answer their inquiries. Just how each artist does that is a personal decision crafted in his or her own time and spirit.
Now, tell me, "Who is Superman?"
-Shoshana Gugenheim Kedem
I define Social Practice, loosely, as artistic production that takes place outside of the traditional artist studio, and in collaboration with other people. Social Practice focuses on the creation of relationships between people in order to work towards an artistic goal, in a specific community, for an intended audience.
- Spencer Byrne-Seres
Social practice as an art is creative endeavour that takes the alchemical world of human relations and collaboration as inspiration and material. Situated between fantasy and reality, it is the smell of streets, malls, homes and neighborhoods instead of traditional art spaces. An artist working in this way often challenges and investigates what the art world gives value to, the interweaving of art and life and what it means to be part of the everyday cosmos.
- Xi Jie Ng (Salty)
Social practice invites public collaboration in activates that re-frame or intervene within the established infrastructures that shapes human experience. Some examples of those infrastructures include human - created geographies, languages, behaviors, customs, institutions, and the power relationships built into all those things.
- Zeph Fishlyn