Creative practice as a social agent: recent artistic, curatorial and design projects that foster social change

  • Opening of the project Critical Mass 2015 in the Lopukhinskiy garden, street furniture created by Raumlabor and local residents during the workshop EMMA
    1/3 | Opening of the project Critical Mass 2015 in the Lopukhinskiy garden, street furniture created by Raumlabor and local residents during the workshop EMMA
  • Communal building of a gazeebo designed by architetc and designer Rikkert Pauuw commissioned by TOk ro Critical Mass 2015
    2/3 | Communal building of a gazeebo designed by architetc and designer Rikkert Pauuw commissioned by TOk ro Critical Mass 2015
  • Opening of the project Critical Mass 2015 in the Lopukhinskiy garden
    3/3 | Opening of the project Critical Mass 2015 in the Lopukhinskiy garden
Photo
What: 
con
Where: 
European University at St Petersburg, Gagarinskaya str, 3
When:
09.10.2015 - 13:00

Creative practice as a social agent: recent artistic, curatorial and design projects that foster social changes
October 9-10, 2015
European University at Saint-Petersburg, Russia

Conference language: English


Participating speakers:
Grant Kester, Professor of Art History at UCDS (University of California, San Diego) and the founding editor of FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism / USA
Hollie Kearns, independent curator / Ireland
Artiom Filatov, street artist, curator and street art festival organizer /Russia
Flo Kasearu, artist, participant of 'Critical Mass' /Estonia
Ricardo Morais, architect, co-founder of Coletivo Warehouse  /Portugal
Jeanne van Heeswijk, artist /The Netherlands
r a k e t a,  interdisciplinary institute, running collaborative projects and experiments within art, design, architecture and digital media/Sweden
Goksoyr&Martens, artist duo/Norway, professional reading of a play 'Look After' on October 9 as a part of the conference program.
Ilya Budraitskis, historian and activist/Russia
Anna Bitkina and Maria Veits, Creative Association of Curators TOK / Russia

The creative practice of the last decades has shown that the borders of art are widening significantly and merge with other disciplines and fields. This change concerns not only spaces and unusual locations where art could be placed but also social processes that artists and other art professionals become part of. Nowadays as part of their projects, artists, curators and designers could serve as social therapists and psychologists, policy makers, developers of different urban zones or social workers. They could create links between citizens and government, communities and neighbors.

International conference, initiated by TOK as a final event of the third season of their ongoing public art project ‘Critical Mass’, will be dedicated to the recent socially engaged creative practices that  foster various social changes in different European and Russian urban environments. The conference will bring together leading international artists, curators, designers, heads of art institutions and researches that have rich experience in socially engaged art practices. At the conference they will share successful and sustainable cases of their practices, exchange knowledge, experiences, working methods as well as touch upon such issues as possibilities, function and territory of art within society.

We find it very important to contribute to generating theoretical knowledge on international socially engaged art practices and introduce local contexts and Russian-based artistic and curatorial methods to the international art community. Elaborating shared concepts and terminology dealing with social practices that could be used by various professionals across disciplines as well as collecting and generating knowledge about engagement of art professionals and community members into sociopolitical processes is one of the conference’s main goal. The concept of the conference ‘Creative practice as a social agent’ has grown out of the open one-day seminar ‘Art as an instrument of social changes: art practices in public spaces’ organized by TOK in partnership with European University at St Petersburg in October, 2013 as a part of ‘Critical Mass’ project. 
 
The conference is addressed to Russian and international specialists and young professionals in art, social sciences, urbanism, design and architecture. Among conference's audience there will be young curators from North-West of Russia and Sweden that are interested in social practices in art. Their participation in the conference is a part of TOK's project 'Young Curators & Art Operators Network' launched together with the Swedish art institution Intercult. The professors and students from the European University at St Petersburg will be also one of the target audiences of the conference. 

CONFERENCE PROGRAM
October, 9
 
13.00 – 13.15      Introduction note by TOK
 
13.15 – 14.00     Jeanne van Heeswijk, artist /The Netherlands, "Public Faculty, exercises in public conversation
 
14.00 – 14.30     Anna Bitkina and Maria Veits, Creative Association of Curators TOK /Russia, Q&A
 
14.30 – 16.00     Break
 
16.00 – 16.30     Hollie Kearns, independent curator / Ireland, "Callan Workhouse Unionon slowed-down development, art, heritage and civic engagement"
 
16.30 – 17.00     Ilya Budraitskis, historian and activist/Russia, "Struggle for the memory: "politics of history" and its activist reflection in today's Russia"
 
17.00 – 17.30     Grant Kester, Professor of Art History at UCDS (University California, San Diego) and the founding editor of FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism/USA, video message, "On the Relationship between Theory and Practice in Socially Engaged Art"
 
19.00 – 20.00     Goksoyr&Martens, artist duo/Norway, professional reading of the play  'Look After' as a part of the conference program at the  Anikushin Museum 
 
 
 
October, 10
 
12.00 – 12.30     Flo Kasearu, artist, participant of 'Critical Mass' /Estonia, "House Music” 
 
12.30 – 13.00    Ricardo Morais, designer, architect at Warehouse Collective/Portugal, “Warehouse – collective practice in a time of crisis” 
 
13.00 – 14.30     Break
 
14.30 – 15.00     Artiom Filatov, street artist, curator and street art festival organizer /Russia, "Art changing the city"
 
15.00 – 15.30     r a k e t a,  interdisciplinary institute, running collaborative projects and experiments within art, design, architecture and digital media/Sweden, "An ocean on radio and so on" 
 
15.30 – 16.00    Discussion, starting with a respondent notes by Janne van Heeswijk and Ilya Budraitskis, summary by TOK