About my research
The emergence of current global challenges (UNDESA, 2016), the gentrification of the cities, and mass displacement call for innovations in public art, socially engaged practices, and institutional partnerships with the communities to promote solidarity, conviviality, and connection with the surroundings (Open Minds, 2008).
Living at a time of increasing economic, social, and geographical mobility, traditional relationships with the community seem increasingly unpredictable and undefined. Forced migrants like myself, amid political events and social displacement, reflect and make efforts to redefine and reclaim place identities. In this sense, traditional place-bound identity markers are changing. This research explores the sense of community [1]and place[2], sensory, imaginaries, material culture, built environment, landscapes, and communities of practices[3]. It responds to the question, what could be the role of SEA artists and educators like myself to help the sense of community and place?
[1] -Community: TCPS 2 (2018) defines a community as “a group of people with a shared identity or interest that has the capacity to act or express itself as a collective” (Chapter 9, Section A). A community may be Territorial (i.e., determined by a specific geographic space), Organizational (i.e., a structured entity), or Interest-based (i.e., defined by a shared goal, such as preservation of a language) (Chapter 9, Section A).
[2] -Sense of place: Steven Feld and Keith Basso (1996) made an essential contribution to the definition of this term in their book Senses of Place. The authors argued how social well-being is attached to the sense of rootedness in place. the author explored “the relation of sensation to emplacement; the experiential and expressive way place know, imagined, yearn for, held, remembered, voiced, lived, contested, and struggled over; and the multiples ways place are metonymically and metaphorically tied to identities” (p.11)
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[3] Communities of practice: Etienne Wenger (2011) argued that communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
My research will examine how innovative Socially Engaged Art (SEA[1]) practices can help build a sense of community. SEA will serve as a strategic means to reach the communities and encourage transformative experiences and social change (Helguera, 2011; Frasz et al., 2017).
I will employ an Art-Based Action Research (ABAR) methodology by implementing three SEA interventions: a photography workshop, a mapping exercise, and a virtual open call. Each SEA intervention will invite community participation to reinterpret the spaces and imagine the urban landscape engaging with the people who live there. From each intervention, formative evaluations will allow progressive refinements from one intervention to another. (Collins et al. l 2004).
I will facilitate three interventions that invite the community to share art experiences toward engaging with the urban environment and imagine alternative futures, one that is inclusive, plural, and participatory. I will examine the notions of SEA and pedagogy, urban sensorial, sense of place and built environment, imaginaries, material culture, sense of community, critical spatial practices, collaborative practices, and communities of practice through the process and outcomes of ABAR.
The aim of this research to produce a pedagogy about how to do inclusive, accessible, and sustainable SEA interventions in communities. The results will contribute to understanding the urban experience of the inhabitants of the neighborhood and reveal the complex dimensions of human relations and the perception of places. In this way, the findings will develop knowledge to help communities create a sense of belonging and build cultural resilience to face identity crises obliterating social bonds and solidarity (Horizons, 2018). They will also support today's institutional agency towards active community participation in programming.
[1] On the institutional page of Tate London (2022, para.1), Social Engaged Practice or Socially Engaged Art (SEA) is an umbrella term that includes categories like New genre public art (Lacy, 1991), and Activist art, offering Bruguera Tatlin’s Whisper #5 performance presented in the gallery in 2008, as examples for both terms. The terms social practice and activism are related to the work of Rick Lowe and his Project Row Houses which is ongoing community development through engagement, art, and action that started in 1993 (PRH, 2022).
