Researching public art and public space

Abstract

This special issue is devoted to research on the changing paradigms of public art, and of public spaces. Today all art can be characterized as public since it is mediated via relational networks. The shift of paradigm from modernist art to contemporary art coincides with this shift of paradigm – from consumption to communication – in the sense that advanced art practices had already absorbed the change from individual mediation to relational networks. In the communication network of relations, artists and works are constitutive elements. Without the works and the artists, the relational network does not exist, and vice versa: Without the network of relations, neither artists nor works are made visible. This constitutive reciprocity of relations is decisive both for theorists doing research on public art and art in public spaces, as well as for artists who are doing research in public spaces.