Far from being swept away in an era of global flux, the notion of community remains a persistent trope, suggesting local bonds, forms of belonging, even moral purpose. And where once the term ‘community arts’ referred to a specialised, and perhaps marginal, form of practice, the notion of art making in, with, and by communities now appears across all art forms, from public art and design to music and new media.
In part, what Martin Mulligan and Pia Smith (2010) term the ‘turn to community’ is obvious in the arts because art and creativity are now accorded a central role in the work of making and shaping community. As Nikolas Rose (1996) argued, “community has become a new spatialisation of government: heterogenous, plural, linking individuals, families and others into contesting cultural assemblies of identities and allegiances.”
But what is driving the persistence of community? How are notions of community figured across art forms? And what are politics of themainstreaming of community in the arts? What desires and anxieties are to be found in this ongoing ‘turn to community’? And can it lead, as Hal Fosters argues, to “an evasion of institutional critique as often as an elaboration of it”?
This event brings together scholars and artists to explore the persistence of notions of community in the framing of contemporary formations of art and creative activity. It is supported by the Centre for Cultural Partnerships, Faculty of the VCA and MCM, University of Melbourne and the Australian Research Council, as part of an ARC-funded Linkage project “Towards an integrated evaluation framework for intrinsic and instrumental benefits of community-based arts,” a partnership between Dr Lachlan MacDowall and Marnie Badham (Centre for Cultural Partnerships, Faculty of the VCA and MCM, University of Melbourne) Dr Martin Mulligan (RMIT University) and Frank Panucci (Australia Council for the Arts).
Speakers:
Associate Professor Martin Mulligan (Globalism Research Centre, RMIT)
Dr Lachlan MacDowall (Centre for Cultural Partnerships, VCA and MCM, University of Melbourne)
Marnie Badham (Centre for Cultural Partnerships, VCA and MCM, University of Melbourne)
Danielle Wyatt (RMIT)
Dr James Hullick (VCA and MCM, University of Melbourne)
Amy Spiers, artist
To register for the symposium please go to the webpage below.
http://www.trybooking.com/BMSP
For additional information please email vcamcm-ccp@unimelb.edu.au
or phone 03 9035 9168