Participation Matters. Forms of Activism in Public Art

Since the 1960s, forms of participatory art and political activism have taken shape inside and outside the contemporary art system: one outcome of this path has been public art. Performances and installations, created outside the places officially assigned to art - in public spaces such as streets, squares and gardens - and which act as tools of spatial claim, connecting urban areas with the people who live there. The essay explores some public art projects and shows how this form of intervention in urban space requires the artist to involve his interlocutors (at different levels: in the execution, in the conception, in the design, etc.), favoring forms of authorship shared. It also shows how projects of this type, precisely because of their ability to involve the public, tend to bring out the texture of the daily life of a community in the shared space and to stimulate participation in wider forms of urban life and governance. The final objective is the presentation of a panorama of experiences, methods of intervention and geographical and cultural realities that have distinguished themselves in recent years for the ability to make art a tool for civic activism.