Social Practice

Art and Social Practice

Through the use of various strategies including "urban interventions, utopian proposals, guerrilla architecture, "new genre" public art, social sculpture, project-based community practice, interactive media, service dispersals, and street performance."^[1] the primary material of social practice is person-to-person exchange, interaction, or participation. These situations, organizations and events can involve various media including photography, video, drawing, text, sound, sculpture, and performance art.

Within the art making process, the practice emphasizes people in relationships to each other and their surroundings, "focusing on engagement and accountability between the audience and the artist"^[2]. Distinct from modern art of the 20th century, social practice builds on a variety of contemporary art movements, including public art, Institutional Critique, interactive art, performance art, and environmental art^[3]. It is distinct from academic art or the high arts movements in that it does not require any association with formal art theory or training. Breaking away from the conventions of any particular structured aesthetic theory, social practice maintains the intention of creativity while incorporating elements of sociology, anthropology, social work, environmentalism, journalism and community outreach.

Through diverse art strategies, the field focuses on topics such as aesthetics, ethics, collaboration, persona, media strategies, and social activism; art strategies may include urban interventions, utopian proposals, guerrilla architecture, "new genre" public art, social sculpture, project-based community practice, interactive media, service dispersals, and street performance.

Source - Wiki