Practicing Discernment in Social Practice Art

Course Description

Summary

How do you discern if your desired social practice art project is ethically sound as well as aesthetically relevant? This class will survey a series of social practice art projects, from high profile “art world” ones to small community-generated gestures, with the goal of evaluating if the project was properly thought through ethically and aesthetically. The class will also include diverse perspectives from the field of social practice art, social activism and art / literary criticism. The goal is not to supply students with a simple framework as much as it is to surface debates about the ways intended or unintended social practice art could exploit the populations or communities it intends to benefit.