Foundation Initiatives

This course, in collaboration with Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA), attempts to think together and interrogate the complimentary as well as contestatory relationship of the notion of the public, and the nomenclature of public art.  Structured as a reading group, it will explore the multiple dimensions of public art practices, their audiences and constituent, emerging vocabularies. The role of art in the public realm in the 21st Century is one with a multidisciplinary emphasis, and this workshop seeks to map out the present socio-cultural/ political moment for public art through modes of reading and writing that will critically consider what public art is un/able to respond to today.

When we outline the breadth of the definitions and details of public art, the terms that arise in association include notions of community, site, intervention, collaboration, appropriation, citation, infrastructure, reception, conversation, curating, participation, negotiation, interface, spectacle and performance, among several others. Through the framework of this workshop, we hope to accomplish a critical positioning and dissecting of intersections between some of these terms and concepts: public art, public space and public sphere (within it the larger context of urbanity, visuality and their expanses and limits). This includes the discussions regarding the formation and affectivity of different publics/audiences; and also possibly, the relationship between public art and the environment, a theme that is an ongoing engagement for FICA via different platforms.

What do artistic practices, working with aspects of the rapidly transforming public realm today, offer to the people and communities they serve? What are the forms of engagements that public art assumes as it unfolds within and across different spaces? What are the kinds of social relations and experiences elicited and invited through such interventions? Platforming these enquiries, we would like to read and highlight the methodologies that drive art practices in the public realm, reflecting upon how the field may be discussed, and how different perspectives and approaches in public art practices reframe and subvert meanings of site and situation. The sessions will also be a process to think about how reading and writing as practices can be positioned within such circuits, particularly focusing on the kinds of questions that can be asked of public art/art and its publics.