Stephen Duncombe is Professor of Media and Culture at New York University and author and editor of six books on the intersection of culture and politics. Duncombe, a life-long political activist, is currently co-founder and Research Director of the Center for Artistic Activism, a research and training organization that helps activists create more like artists and artists strategize more like activists.

Abstract (with Steve Lambert, Director, ArtistCenter for Artistic Activism): Making Art Work

Art has always had a social function. Whether it was to curry favor with the gods, ensure fertility, or secure a successful hunt, art, from its inception, was supposed to do something. Art worked to valorize religious and secular authority, and to undermine it. Even l'art pour l'art served as an instrument of critique of an overly instrumental society. Today, art mainly functions as a form of financial and cultural capital for the elite, yet it can also work to critique the world as it is and offer up visions of what a different one might be. Drawing on over a decade of experience as directors of the Center for Artistic Activism, sociologist Stephen Duncombe and artist Steve Lambert will discuss their work with artists and activists around the world helping them make art work for social justice. They will explore the different work that art (through affect) and activism (by effect) does, and introduce the concept of æffect as a way to bring the two together in a dynamic hybrid. The problem of evaluation will also be addressed, responding to the question of: How do we know if it works? with a methodology of assessment that is appropriate to the practice of artistic activism and sensitive to the resistance to metrics common amongst its practitioners, yet still offers a definitive way to account for impact. Finally, Lambert and Duncombe will take on the elephant in the room: the equation of “art that works” with propaganda, and suggest a new perspective with which to approach this old fear.

Bio

Stephen Duncombe is Professor of Media and Culture at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and the Department of Media, Culture and Communications at the Steinhardt School of New York University. He is the author, co-author, editor, and co-editor of six books, including Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy; Notes From Underground: Zines and the Politics of Underground Culture; The Bobbed Haired Bandit: Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York; the Cultural Resistance Reader; White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race; and (Open) Utopia. Duncombe is also the creator of The Open Utopia.org, an open-access, open-source, web-based edition of Thomas More’s Utopia, and co-creator of Actipedia.org, a user-generated digital database of creative activism case studies. In 1998, he was awarded the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching by the State University of New York and was presented with the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching at NYU’s Gallatin School in 2012. Stephen Duncombe is a life-long political activist, co-founding a community-based advocacy group in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which won an award for “Creative Activism” from the Abbie Hoffman Foundation, and working as an organizer for the NYC chapter of the international direct action group, Reclaim the Streets. He is co-founder and Research Director of the Center for Artistic Activism, a research and training institute that helps activists to create more like artists and artists to strategize more like activists. Duncombe is currently writing a book on the effect and affect of artistic activism, and his scholarly and activist work has been supported by, among others, the Open Society and Fulbright foundations and the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts

http://www.stephenduncombe.com/

Steve Lambert is Associate Professor of New Media at SUNY Purchase College. He has worked alongside artists and activists in 16 countries on 4 continents helping them to effect power. Trained in the arts, he is known for large scale, public projects that engage new audiences on difficult topics through the social science of comedy, games, theater, and democratic participation. Lambert is the co-founder and co-director of the Center for Artistic Activism, a research and training institute to help activists be more creative and artists to be more effective. 

Abstract (with Stephen Duncombe, Proferssor of Media and Culture at New York University): Making Art Work

Art has always had a social function. Whether it was to curry favor with the gods, ensure fertility, or secure a successful hunt, art, from its inception, was supposed to do something. Art worked to valorize religious and secular authority, and to undermine it. Even l'art pour l'art served as an instrument of critique of an overly instrumental society. Today, art mainly functions as a form of financial and cultural capital for the elite, yet it can also work to critique the world as it is and offer up visions of what a different one might be. Drawing on over a decade of experience as directors of the Center for Artistic Activism, sociologist Stephen Duncombe and artist Steve Lambert will discuss their work with artists and activists around the world helping them make art work for social justice. They will explore the different work that art (through affect) and activism (by effect) does, and introduce the concept of æffect as a way to bring the two together in a dynamic hybrid. The problem of evaluation will also be addressed, responding to the question of: How do we know if it works? with a methodology of assessment that is appropriate to the practice of artistic activism and sensitive to the resistance to metrics common amongst its practitioners, yet still offers a definitive way to account for impact. Finally, Lambert and Duncombe will take on the elephant in the room: the equation of “art that works” with propaganda, and suggest a new perspective with which to approach this old fear.

Eduardo de la Fuente is Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong (Australia); he has been a long‑term Faculty Fellow of the Yale Centre for Cultural Sociology; and recently became a Fellow of the Institute for Place Management of Manchester Metropolitan University. He is also currently President ex‑officio of the International Sociological Association‘s Research Committee for the Sociology of the Arts (ISA RC37).

Attuned to texture: Place intelligence and the sociology of art

Compared to cultural geography and new fields such as place management, the sociology of art has arguably been slow to incorporate “place” into accounts of creativity and cultural production. Exceptions include Silver and Clark’s book on “scenescapes” which focused on the “style of life, spirit, meaning, mood” or “aesthetic meaning of place”. However, even they employ a rather disembodied and abstract notion of place; and echo Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class in seeing place as a set of amenities and the city as an “entertainment machine”. In short, what has often characterized discussions of place in relation to creativity and cultural production has been an inattentiveness to the materialities and sensory-cum-psychic “affordances” of the built and natural environments. In this presentation, I attempt to think through the material and aesthetic qualities of place, and the role these do and might play in creativity and cultural production. I expand upon my own recent thinking regarding the benefits of a textural approach to meaning-making and social life more generally (de la Fuente, 2019a; 2019b; 2020). My suggestion will be an emphasis on texture as a concept/framework that allows those interested in the link between place, people and (creative or cultural) products to: (1) broaden their definition of creative, buzzy or appealing cities, regions, neighbourhoods and precincts; (2) undercut the notion of place as visual object or “postcard” (Relph) and shift the emphasis to the haptic, the sonic, the sense of smell and the kinesthetic; and (3) move towards an urban politics/activism centred on the notion of place as "made" or “crafted” (Sennett) rather than merely “consumed” or “experienced” (Pine and Gilmore). In the final analysis, what the textural sensibility calls for is research, policy and practice based on the embodied “intelligence[s] of place” (Malpas).

References

de la Fuente, Eduardo (2019a) ‘After the Cultural Turn: For a Textural Sociology’, Sociological Review, 67(3): 552-567. 

de la Fuente, Eduardo (2019b) ‘TANTO… QUANTO: Sobre a Necessidade de Uma Sociologia Textural Da Arte/ BOTH-AND: On the Need for a Textural Sociology of Art’ CADERNO CRH vol.  32 (no. 87): 475-488. Available in Portuguese and English in same volume. 

de la Fuente, Eduardo (2020) “Living in a Textured World: Sociology and Contextual Intelligence” The Sociological Review Blog, September 4, https://www.thesociologicalreview.com/living-in-a-textured-world-sociology-and-contextual-intelligence/

Bio

Eduardo de la Fuente was born in Montevideo Uruguay and lives in Sydney, Australia. He first studied economics and politics but, at around the same time he undertook postgraduate research, he came to realize he was probably more interested in the ‘soft’ things in life like art and design, creativity, place, landscape and the built environment. But now that policymakers, city leaders and a host of professionals in the so-called ‘hard’ disciplines have started to recognize the value of culture, creativity and the qualities present in the world, Eduardo has drifted into debates about urban and regional development, place making and place management. He has taught in sociology, media and communications, creative arts and creativity and innovation programs at the universities of Tasmania, Macquarie, Monash, Flinders, and most recently at James Cook in North Queensland. He has published four books, over 35 journal articles and chapters, and is currently Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong. Eduardo has been a long‑term Faculty Fellow of the Yale Centre for Cultural Sociology; and recently became a Fellow of the Institute for Place Management of Manchester Metropolitan University. He is one of the founding members of the Creativity in Higher Education Network (CHEN) and also President ex‑officio of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee for the Sociology of the Arts (ISA RC37). 2020 will see the publication of his co-edited book (with Ariella van Luyn) Regional Cultures, Economies and Creativity. He is also currently researching and writing a single-authored book to do with what he is calling the ‘textural sensibility’ and its theoretical, methodological and practical application to questions of culture and economy, creativity and place.
 

Laura Beloff is an artist, academic researcher and Associate Professor at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture (Finland). She is an expert on practices across art, science and technology, and her artistic production focuses on the merger of technology and biology.

Abstract:  Art & Science –Socially-Engaged?

During the recent decade, we have become widely aware of environmental and climatic challenges, and how our current lifestyles are not sustainable in the future. Similarly, the recent years have seen an increase in interests towards a genre of art that deals with crossover between art, science and technology. This genre, often simply referred as art & science, points out already in its title a connection beyond the field of art towards other disciplines. One can ask why has this area gathered a lot of interests in the arts during the last decade; is it because of the ecological crisis we are encountering; is it a reaction by artists opposing the commercial and elitist art world; or some other reason? The practices and art works, located under the title of art & science, often include non-human living species from bacteria and fungi to larger animals and plants, whereas, in contrast, the term socially-engaged art is commonly used in reference to art that deals with societal and political issues and often aims at supporting equality, inclusion and other positive values within human society. Art & science projects that incorporate non-humans can be critically scrutinized from the perspective of socially-engaged art. Though, the term socially-engaged points towards inclusion of scientific and other interests beyond art for art’s sake, one can ask about the role of the non-humans included in the art & scienceworks and also about art’s legitimacy for doing this. Karen van den Berg (2019) has categorized a type of participatory or socially-engaged art as ‘spectator art’ in her typology of three distinct categories, which are exemplified by art works that deal with refugees. Van den Berg defines ‘spectator art’ as art that integrates refugees as performers. In a comparable way, many of the art & science works that are directed for human audiences are constructed as a designed experience for us (humans) to observe another species from a safe distance. The talk will discuss social engagement in the field of art & science from artist’s perspective. It will include a selection of exemplifying art works from the author and other artists.

Bio

Dr. Laura Beloff (FI) is an internationally acclaimed artist and academic researcher. She has engaged in numerous international activities including participation in international research and art projects, organizing committees of international conferences, editing an international publication, evaluator and opponent of PhD dissertations, research visits (recently to Trento University 2018, Shanghai SIVA 2017 and Mexico UNAM 2015) and positions abroad, invited keynote speaker abroad, evaluator for research funding for European Commission and for Austrian, Norwegian, French, Irish and Finnish art & science funding bodies. Beloff’s practice-driven research is located in the cross-section of art, science, and technology. The outcome of her research manifests itself in publications and in exhibited art works like innovative experiments, process-based and participatory installations exploring a merger of technology and biology - as well as research papers, articles and book-chapters in variety of publications. Laura Beloff is frequently invited to lecture on her artistic research practice in universities and art & science events. She is a strong proponent of developing collaboration possibilities between the arts and the sciences. As an artist and an academic researcher Beloff has received various awards and grants from Finnish, Nordic and European funding bodies. She has been a Full Professor at the Art Academy in Oslo 2002-06, a visiting Professor at The University of Applied Arts in Vienna 2009-11 and she has been a recipient of a prestigious 5-year grant for artists from the Finnish State 2007-11. In 2012-2019 she was an Associate Professor at IT University of Copenhagen, and additionally a Head of Section 2012-2017 and a Head of the PhD School 2012-2019. Currently she is an Associate Professor at Aalto University (Arts) since Fall 2019.