Ed Carroll
Three Irish projects under consideration were initiated by artists Seamus McGuinness, Ailbhe Murphy and Glenn Loughran. The first section of this article will document each of the selected art practices, which have a civil orientation. The second section will introduce an idea of civil society as a space to experience being public with its potential for participation and reasonable discourse. The final section will also draw upon the writing of Emmanuel Lévinas whose work questions the priority given to ‘thought’ and ‘thinking’ over and above our dealings with our fellow human beings. The publication is produced on the occasion of the launch of the Life:Art project during Kaunas Biennial 2009 (www.bienale.lt/lifeart). Life:Art is an online resource and platform for distribution of cultural practice between artists and non-artists working in context with each other. The Irish Youth Foundation and Dublin City University Publication Assistance Fund 2009 funded the publication and the Irish Embassy in Vilnius kindly supported its translation into Lithuanian language.
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Steven L. Bridges
Focusing on the notions of collaboration, improvisation, representation, and community, this analysis seeks to scrutinize and question socially engaged, public art practices in their layering of both sociopolitical and aesthetic qualities. An analysis of the exhibition ciudadMULTIPLEcity, held in Panama City, Panama in 2003 will explore the multivalent and ultimately contingent nature of such practices. By making the invisible visible (i.e. social tensions, power dynamics, marginalized groups of individuals), these projects create situations that embody what political philosophers Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have termed “radical democracy” through the activation of an “agonistic public sphere.”
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