Art and Public Spaces in the City

Discursive Formats, September 09, 2007

Book presentation with following discussion on questions of failure and success of public art projects in concern of their ambitions towards the idea of 'public'. 

In the 1990s many art venues transformed themselves into forums of political and social discussion. It shifted the institutional critique of the 1980s to an analysis of the mass media’s influence on public spaces through economic pressure. For the past few years, this critique has brought the "protected spaces" of the art world directly into the public realm. In addressing the construction of public spaces on a social, economic, and political level, these investigations and cultural interventions are new lines of inquiry for art historians. The research project, Kunst Öffentlichkeit Zürich (Art in Zurich's Public Spaces), is based on this premise. It takes the city and urban space as a case study and site for experimentation.