Advisor/tutor: Marina Vishmidt

Arnhem, June 2016

Abstract

Art as the Property of Citizens is a proposal that addresses the following question: how can we conceive of participatory art in its socially engaged tendencies and contingencies? It reads the relation of art and citizenship in two ways: art as a process that becomes ‘owned’ by citizens and art as creativity defined as an inherent ‘quality’ of citizens. Art, in the praxis of socially engaged participatory works, is an experiment with a new constellation of the social that can exist within the parameters of daily life and can empower its participants to produce solutions to issues of concern. Aesthetics is in the process of creating new constellations in relations and new configurations in exchange systems that could initiate a type of social transformation.