How can a hybrid approach of using archives, exhibitions, art and an active engagement with communities help us to better understand, engage and query the people, and notion, of urban publics? The articles collected here pose a series of questions about the ways in which we define the public, to whom public space belongs, and the experience of making art for the public. They explore the multiple ways that ideas of “the public”, “art”, and “community” intersect in the urban sphere, and take a critical approach to consider the multiple definitions of these terms.
February 22, 2014
Archives, Exhibitions, Art, and the Urban Public
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani is a photographer, urbanist and curator. She is co-founder of Buscada, an interdisciplinary practice on place and dialogue, and is Associate Director of Civic Engagement Initiatives at the New School. From 2009-2012 she was Visiting Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at the New School and a fellow at the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths, London. She holds a doctorate in Environmental Psychology from the Graduate Center, CUNY and her visual urbanist research and practice address the experience and politics of everyday place. Her scholarship has appeared in journals including Society & Space, Space & Culture, Radical History Review and Places; her work has been exhibited with institutions including MIT, Creative Time, the Center for Architecture, and the Tenement Museum.
Comments by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani