Topic: Art and Social Practice

"Over the past few decades, concepts about the role and nature of art itself have begun to shift radically. Art has begun to use the social sphere as a point of departure. It has begun to extend authorship through participatory processes. Artistic processes such as social sculpture, relational aesthetics and new genre public art have ushered in a new era. It is a re-conceptualization of the artistic process....

This new process celebrates the capacity for art to be an active, generative process, that produces social change, rather than suggesting it. By exploring complex systems of cultural context, human engagement, and knowledge, it is becoming an art form focused on the production of context, rather than content. Its process is collaborative an participatory, manifesting through things like community supported interventions, shared resources, collective decision making, and lateral social structures. The process is an inquiry with the participants, and is executed through constructing formalized structures that ensure community participation. It advocates for social regeneration with the recognition that the society we wish to live in is not an end goal, but an active process of creation."

To read the full article in Theory Magazine , click HERE.

Alexander Ashton is a Masters student in History at University of Montana, Bozeman.  He is also involved with the Wildfire Collective, a collective of decentralized community empowerment programs, providing resources for multi-generational advocacy and a re-localized sustainable future.