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Department of Political Science, Communication Science and Information Engineering University of Sassari (Italy)

Lisbon Street Art and Urban Creativity International Conference 3-5 July 2014

To Govern Artfully

Linking public art to political participation towards new forms of urban governance

Laura Iannelli Lorenza Parisi

“relational public art”, “dialogic aesthetics”, “community art”, “contextual art”, “processual art”, “littorial art”… Jacob et al. (1995), Lacy (1995), Miles (1997), Know (2004), Detheridge (2010).

Suzanne Lacy Full Circle, Chicago, 1993

A study on ‘projectual citizenship’ in participatory public art

•  citizens’ involvement in collective actions •  transformation of physical urban spaces •  new relations with and within the places where citizens live •  a shared and alternative representation of these places and their conflicts

Theatre en vol Habitat Immaginari - Dentro e Fuori, Sassari, 2013

Art-in-the-public-interest

“social movement studies” that adopt a cultural approach (Roth 1983; Eyerman, Jamison 1998; Roy 2010) cultural statistics produced by national and international research institutes (Laaksonen 2010; UNESCO 2012) institutional perspectives (DiMaggio 1986; Crane 1992)

Artistic Communication Culture and Political Participation

beyond the traditional approaches

(RQ3) which relationships between these models of participatory politics proposed by relational public artists and the forms of participatory urban governance and spatial planning? (Arnstein 1969; Healey 2003; Lane 2005).

Research questions

(RQ1) which characteristics of contemporary collective actions can be identified in contemporary practices of participatory public arts? (Beck 1986; Giddens 1991; Micheletti 2003; Castells 2012; Bennett 2012)

(RQ2) which models of citizen engagement described by literature on communication and political participation (information, consultation, deliberation and mobilization) are proposed by artists to the active, performative and empowered audicences? (Hall, Jefferson 1976; Abercrombrie, Longhurst 1998; Bolter, Grusin 1999: Jenkins 2006; Castells 2009; Dahlgren 2009);

a profound crisis in traditional forms of political participation (Istat 2014) a “participatory turn” in the models of territory governance and spatial planning (Ciaffi, Mela 2006).

Contexts: Italy and Sardinia

mixed-method approach (Craswell, Plano Clark 2010). sources: “key informants” (in particular curators), national and international databases and the literature review produced by art critics and historians.   Italian artistic practices established since 2000 that dealt with political issues concerning the development of the territory semi-structured questionnaire (information that artists left on their websites, online newspapers, Facebook pages) variables related to: _the artists (organizational structures of artists, relations they carry out where the artistic actions take places, relations with public institutions) _the artworks (commission and funding of projects, characteristics of the engaged citizens, spatial and social characteristics of the contexts where the projects took place, etc.) In-depth interviews with Sardinian artists Interviews to administrators and focus groups with citizens different riflexivities and symbolic contexts (Couldry 2004, 2010, 2012)

Methology

Findings

10 in depth interviews

85 mapped artistic practices

Findings (RQ1)

•  the majority of the cases took place in the last 4 years (2010-2014)

•  a broad range of “subpolitical” and “lifestyle” issues (in particular environmental issues)

•  only few artworks rely on web 2.0 participatory technologies

•  actions carried out by (open and flexible) collectives/networks of groups

•  shared believes about the importance of the individual participation in a “we” that acts in order to foster a social and political transformation

•  an “affective” sense of belonging, driven by “personal”, “individualized” ideas, but oriented to a collective cause/project

art as political collective action

Findings (RQ2) models of citizen engagement

information (N=9)

consultation (N=38)

deliberation (N=26)

mobilization (N=52)

informal learning (N=20)

Walls/Orizzontale Sanba, Roma, 2014

Street art 2012 aliment(e)azione, Sassari, 2011

Pac Corporation aliment(e)azione, Sassari, 2014

Findings (RQ2) models of citizen engagement

mobilization (N=52)

Walls/Orizzontale Sanba, Roma, 2014

Findings (RQ2) models of citizen engagement

Pac Corporation aliment(e)azione, Sassari, 2014

(tactical) information Hall, Jefferson (1976); De Certau (1980)

Findings (RQ2) Effectiveness and active audiences

•  Sardinian artists perceive their works as effective in transforming the city by looking at the progressive scale of citizen involvement they activate

•  “Reactions” from performative audiences •  “Re-mediation” processes (Bolter, Grusin 1999) and long term effects

on interpretative audiences of their post-production mediated public artworks

Electoral Poster Administrative Campaign, Sassari 2014

Facebook Post Az-Namusn.Art , Porto Torres

Findings (RQ3)

Participatory art and urban governance

Most of the Italian projects has been funded by public administrations or private companies (N= 50) Beyond "counter-cultures", deep connections with the processes of policy formation and decision making

I believe that applying for public fundings limit my artistic vein, using a romantic expression; moreover I think it could even be risky for us, in some ways it can even turn against us and affect the public opinion toward our work (M/35, aliment(e)azione)

I like to work with public funding to create culture, citizens have to ‘dig’ public administrations in order to obtain some satisfactory result (M/29, aliment(e)azione)

From the artists’ perspectives: different beliefs and competing ideas regarding the relationship with public administrations

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To Govern Artfully

Next steps

interviews with public administrators that supported these artistic actions and focus groups with citizens

“Participatory Research Laboratories”: platforms of debate involving different actors (artists, administrators, citizens, sociologists, architects, etc.) An online platform (texts, video, images, georeferenced maps) about the observed experiences we analysed (and the future updates)

To Govern Artfully

Team members

Laura Iannelli (scientific coordinator) liannelli@uniss.it Lorenza Parisi  lparisi@uniss.it University of Sassari: Carolina Marelli, Luca Massidda, Antonello Monsù Scolaro, Maurizio Minchilli, Sabina Selli, Silvia Covarino Sapienza University of Rome: Marco Bruno, Stefania Parisi University of Bologna: Pierluigi Musarò

Project funded by the Regional Law 7/2007 “Promotion of the scientific research and technological innovation in Sardinia”