7 thoughts on “Socially Engaged Art in a Venn Diagram”

1. Pingback: lucazoid: socially engaged art in a venn diagram | dance practice-as-research 2014

2. Lucas November 5, 2014 at 10:31 pm

   update:

   

   I added the third element – art – because I realised that, with version 1 of the diagram, it could seem that simply bringing together activism and academia might be sufficient for the generation of socially engaged art projects.

   Not so! What I’m calling here ‘bounded aesthetic experience” refers to one of the basic conditions of art – the fact that it needs to be framed and separated out from the flow of (eg) everyday life in order to be discernable as such – that is, discernable as art, and not (only) everyday life.

   This separative act of framing does not need to be a huge rupture – it can be infrathin.

   Kaprow, somewhat clumsily, talked about the fact that artists working in the flow of everyday life nevertheless still carry around a “mental rectangle” to drop around whatever they’re doing. And I think many examples of socially engaged art practice still adhere to this principle, for better or worse.

   So there you have it – version 2 of the venn diagram – probably even faultier than the first!

   (some discussion on this, over here)

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3. Randall Szott July 13, 2016 at 8:46 pm

   Hey Lucas, here is a four circle venn diagram (there are many more on my site):

   https://randallszott.org/2016/01/03/fill-in-the-blanks-and-move-things-around-part-ii-a-wildly-partial-map-of-social-practice/

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4. Lucas Post authorApril 28, 2018 at 2:02 pm

   update: here’s a better photograph of my three circle venn diagram:

   

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5. Lucas Post authorFebruary 13, 2022 at 10:30 pm

   Update – the diagram was used as the cover of the Diagrammatic catalogue for the exhibition at Deakin University Art Gallery in 2018, many thanks to Jasmin Stephens and James Lynch. Link: here

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6. Lucas Post authorMarch 3, 2022 at 1:17 pm

   UPDATE
   Artist Jen Rae mentioned this diagram in an interview on ABC Radio National “The Philosopher’s Zone”, on a segment themed “Art and Climate”. You can listen to the interview at the ABC website here or else here.

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7. Lucas Post authorMarch 3, 2022 at 1:21 pm

   UPDATE
   Dr Susie Lingham has written an essay about mediation and conflict in contemporary art. I scrawled her an update of this diagram for the essay, which you can read here.
   And the diagrams themselves, if you want to see em bigger, are here:
   
   and here
   

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