Recuperating Conflict: Between Critical Generosity and Antagonistic Activation

Abstract

In this paper, I will argue that small scale conflict and disagreement in civic life are a vernacular part of our social experience and yet, in the hands of artists, they can actively work against larger hegemonic structures and help foster new expressions of agency and democratic action. By examining a number of socially engaged art projects I developed as the research director of the artist collective, Broken City Lab, and by situating this work in relation to a number of core ideas exploring notions of antagonism, I propose a tactical recuperation of the idea of conflict in order to see it as a core part of our democratic social lives.