Anamnesis: Dialogues of Art in Public Spaces

    • Nice November 2018
    • Presentation speakers
      • Sandra Uskokovic, Arts & Restoration Department, University of Dubrovnik, Croatia

    Abstract:

    “Anamneses…” is a critical inquiry of the culture of space and of economic exploitation of public spaces in order to show a wide span of art practices that enable citizens to become co-creators of public spaces. Croatian contemporary art in public spaces creates a particular point of view on collective culture and its affirmation in urban life. It explores ways in which art interventions and practices transform and symbolically shape public spaces; ways in which they participate and change the meaning of public spaces, where users could feel in a different way experimental character of sensory experience; where interactions of artists produce opinions, ideas, values and practices that show and enhance new models of place existence and art production. These creative practices reveal to us as open ended collaborative researches and rehearsals, manipulations and translation and performative thinking. They are a kind of critique of subjective, mystical and divine origin of creativity, proposing that creativity posses distributive, perspective and performative character. In the context of crisis of democracy today, Anamneses investigates how art reacts to the transformation of public sphere from diverse cultural, historical, discursive and socio-political perspectives. It is a pursuit for particular public areas and practices in relation to power structures of the art world, looking at transcultural processes of subjectification and community building. Art practices are communicative flows that are open by the logic that is active in urban spaces today – a logic that is necessary for the production of urbanity. Performative approach to the place enables us to discern various factors that are often unrecognized and ignored in theory and practice. The place as it reveals to us, it is fluid and process based; it is changing and polychrome with blurred boundaries.