Socially engaged art, at its core, seeks to dismantle the traditional artist-audience binary, fostering collaborative experiences that generate knowledge and catalyze social change. Within this realm, research-creation, a methodology that blends artistic practice with rigorous inquiry, becomes a potent tool for exploring the nuanced interplay between embodiment, emergence, and relationality. Research-creation, crucially, is not simply art that illustrates research findings, nor is it research that merely analyzes art. It's a dynamic interplay where creative processes are integral to the generation of knowledge, emphasizing the investigative journey and recognizing that artistic forms can produce unique and valuable insights. It is an approach to research that combines creative and academic research practices, and supports the development of knowledge and innovation through artistic expression, scholarly investigation, and experimentation. It is about the creation process being situated within the research activity and producing critically informed work in a variety of media (art forms). Rather than simply observing or documenting, artists become active participants, generating new forms of understanding through embodied action and shared experience, using methods that combine creative and academic research practices.
Embodiment in this context moves beyond the individual body as a site of expression. It acknowledges the body as a locus of lived experience, memory, and cultural inscription, deeply intertwined with social and environmental contexts. Research-creation methodologies that prioritize embodiment often involve participatory workshops, site-specific performances, or interactive installations that invite participants to engage physically with the artwork and its surrounding environment. For instance, a project exploring urban displacement might involve walking workshops that map embodied experiences of navigating contested spaces, or collaborative movement exercises that explore the feeling of being uprooted. These methodologies, through the lens of research-creation, recognize that knowledge is not solely cognitive but is also felt, sensed, and lived through the body, contributing to the development of knowledge through artistic expression.
Emergence, a concept borrowed from complex systems theory, recognizes that meaning and understanding are not pre-determined but rather arise through the dynamic interactions between participants, materials, and contexts. In socially engaged art, this translates to a research process that embraces uncertainty and allows for unexpected outcomes. Research-creation methodologies that foster emergence might involve open-ended creative prompts, iterative prototyping, or collaborative world-building exercises. Rather than seeking to control the outcome, the artist acts as a facilitator, creating the conditions for collective exploration and discovery. For instance, a community garden project might employ emergent methodologies by allowing the garden’s design and purpose to evolve organically based on the participants' needs and contributions, demonstrating how the creative process itself is a site of knowledge production.
Relationality, the understanding that all beings are interconnected and interdependent, is fundamental to socially engaged art research creation. Methodologies that emphasize relationality prioritize dialogue, collaboration, and co-creation. This might involve participatory action research (PAR), where community members are actively involved in all stages of the research process, or collaborative storytelling projects that amplify marginalized voices and foster intersubjective understanding. Relational methodologies, when approached as research-creation, recognize that knowledge is not produced in isolation but rather through shared experience and mutual respect, producing critically informed work through collaborative art forms. For instance, a project addressing environmental justice might utilize collaborative mapping techniques to visualize the interconnectedness of human and ecological systems, or employ storytelling circles to create spaces for collective healing and transformative dialogue.
By integrating embodiment, emergence, and relationality through the lens of research-creation, socially engaged art moves beyond traditional research paradigms. It embraces the subjective, the affective, and the experiential, recognizing that knowledge is not a static entity but rather a dynamic and evolving process. The artist, in this context, becomes a facilitator of shared meaning-making, creating spaces for collective learning and social transformation. Through embodied action, emergent processes, and relational encounters, socially engaged art research creation has the potential to generate new forms of knowledge that are both deeply personal and profoundly social, contributing to a more just and equitable world, with the creation process itself situated within the research activity.
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Art is for the people. It is the thread that holds society together, allowing us to be with one another, to feel with our whole selves, and to learn with every fibre of our being.
Art has been made to erase history and spark revolutions. Art is a weapon-- one that must be wielded carefully, bravely, and with the utmost intention. Yet, under capitalism -- art withers. It becomes expendable, the first to be dismissed because of two things: The first because capitalism reduces art to a financial transaction tied to wealth and class. This further distances art from the public, creating a void of accessibility and understanding. This leads to considering art as something superfluous and done as an act of splurging. The second is because it encourages critical thinking and invites the public to think and feel. It ignites collective intellectual paradigm shifts and emotional fervour that unites people and inspires resistance. For both these reasons, art, under capitalism, dies.
Art is for the people. Since the dawn of humanity, it has been a gift—born of the earth and inspired by it. We create. We are the players on the stage. Theatre of the everyday. Dances on the sidewalk. Music in the trees. Paintings in the clouds. We can not be separated from this beauty and potent discipline we call art. We are of it. It is of us.
A call for a return to this truth.
A call for a return to each other.
A call for care, for intention.
A call for the artist to remember each member of their community in the making of artwork.
A call for the community to commune through a creative act.
Art is our right.
Art is for the people.
The Nature of Us is a devised sound installation and choral performance conceived by Kevin
Jesuino, Jean-Louis Bleau and Cassette Bessette. In collaboration with TRAction, ARTIO Choir,
and the Mount Royal University Choral Association, the project blended soundscapes,
monologues, and choral music to foster a deeper connection with nature. Set in public green
spaces, the installation featured a six-channel sound system discreetly integrated into the
environment. The 30-minute soundscape guided listeners through a meditative experience as
pre-recorded vocal performances from six choir members harmonized with the natural sounds of
birds, trees, wind, and other ambient elements.
Last weekend I booked a flight to Portland to attend Assembly, a four-day conference featuring presentations, discussions, interventions and activities that look at topics related to art and social practice.The conference is hosted by Portland State University which has a Master in Fine Arts program dedicated to art and social practice.
Over the next two weeks I’d like to highlight some of the pieces I saw at the conference. These will be posted in two parts. Part two of this blog post will be posted in two weeks.
It was brought to my attention by my Montreal-based colleague and social art practitioner, Vincent Brière, that it’s incredibly difficult to share the experience of social engaged art through 2D images or write-ups when socially engaged art relies heavily on the experience the participants had with one another and the event. So, I will inevitably fail at defining fully each of the following pieces I experienced. But, let’s try!
Williams Ave Mapping Circle
Emma Collburn in collaboration with Project Grow artists
I had just arrived in Portland and my first destination was to North Williams Avenue and Project Grow. Emma Collburn, the lead artist, had produced a series of community mapping exercise over the year in the area associated with North Williams Avenue. What I came to find out was that North Williams Avenue, since the 1980s had seen significant development that caused the demographic of the area to change. Emma Collburn engaged the community in mapping out where there had been significant economic investment put into the area, and where it hadn’t. For her presentation at Assembly, she had the public and artists at Project Grow, whose mission is to provide space for artists with mental and physical disabilities, collectively create a map of North Williams Avenue by attaching fabric to represent different city blocks. The project engaged me on several levels. On one level I was just getting to know Portland and learning about the issues of community development, gentrification and the displacement that I see far too often in the city I live in. It allowed me to learn a specific history of place. On another level it was great to see Emma engaging the artists at Project Grow in the creation of this piece. I got to tour around the facility and was blown away by how much the organization serves it’s community of mental and physically disabled artists, it’s inclusive policies, the urban garden business cycle they also teach their clients and the goat that hangs out by the window.
Click here to learn more about Project Grow http://www.albertinakerr.org/DevelopmentalDisability/CommunityInclusion/PortCity/Programs/ProjectGrow
Portland Museum of Art & Sports Opening
Anke Schüttler and Lauren Moran
It’s not often that I connect recreational sport and contemporary art. Like stereotypical high school characters the Jock and the Art-Geek aren’t suppose to get along. One is always in the gym flexing their muscles and being driven by the ever increasing sexy body they are manifesting. While the other, the Art-Geek, stereotypicly the introvert, hides away in the art room attempting to make just one more beautiful painting.
The Portland Museum of Art & Sport was conceived by German artist Anke Schüttler, and American, Lauren Moran. The idea was to have the two realms of sport and art inspire each other. The venue — Portland State Universities Rec Centre. Amongst people swimming laps and packs of men ripping shredding their muscles with dumb-bells lay an array of artistic expression. On one wall hung a vertical rectangular paper which was torn on one end and was covered in markings made by individuals in wheelchairs from Project Grow Portland. There were pictures and description cards around the gym featuring moments in history when humans had lifted heavy objects a project conceived by Adam Carlin. And, in front of the treadmill were mathematical charts that described what was happening to the body of an individual who chose to run on that treadmill which was a collaboration between the curators and a mathematician grad at Portland State University. These plus many other pieces were placed amongst the sweaty recreationalists and gym equipment. In someways it made it feel safer for me to be in the gym — a place that much like high school, made me feel alienated and not athletic enough. The Portland Museum of Art & Sport was founded in 2015 and will continue to explore the subject and relationship between contemporary art and recreational sports in the future.
Ink Visible Public Event
Arianna Warner, Kimber Teatro, Aubrey Hight, Tanya Magdalena, Trevor Ward, and Lindsay Carter
This event happened at a bar. Never an issue for me. It posed the question “What is your invisible disability?” Working in collaboration with tattoo artists, project lead Arianna Warner, asked these tattoo artists the same question and asked them to write about their invisible disability and also design a temporary tattoo that represented that illness. The night of the event the public were asked to consider the invisible disability and also write their story and design a temporary tattoo inspired by their writing. The tattoo artists’ stories and tattoos were there to collect and bind into a book you could take home.
I couldn’t help but discuss mental health with the people around me as we designed our tattoos and sipped our Portland craft beer. This idea that mental health is invisible is indicative of the world’s reluctance to openly talk about mental health. Anxiety, depression, ADHD are all common mental health issues that many people feel ashamed telling someone about. This event allowed peoples stories to be told in a safe space and an equal exchange between everyone as we all attempted to define what disability we hold inside of us that we don’t often express to others.
To learn more about this project visit the project website : http://www.inkvisible.org
For more information on ASSEMBLY 2016 please visit this website: