This issue of Nolens Volens focuses on the idea of Useful Art. The proposal comes from Tania Bruguera, who is currently developing the project of creating a political party for immigrants, the Immigrant Movement International; the proposal examines the concept of an art that implicates its social use.
We can consider that useful art, as it is in our interest to define it now, would be found for the most part in those practices which seek to be proactive in a specific context, be it confronting alternative micropolitics of a social nature to the status quo imposed by the dominant politics, or responding to the specific demands or desires formulated by a community or a movement.
Nolens Volens proposes to explore diverse projects and positions related to of understanding artistic practice.
We are interested in emphasising its potential para create new means of relation between art and society, even the true possibility of an alliance with truly transforming movements… but also to discuss its contradictions, such as the instrumentalisation of which this type of projects might be the object when they turn into substitutes of true social changes and are exhibited by cultural institutions as a demonstration of progressive ideas and social involvement. Here art turns into pure propaganda (we cannot but point out as a paradigm the model of White Night with its “participative” proposals, where any hypothetical usefulness is incorporated into marketing strategies to create the city trademark).
Finally, it is essential to point out that this type of practices belonging in very specific moments and dynamics are not easily comprehended by the artistic institution, accustomed to means of production and dissemination with a high degree of hierarchy and structure. In the words of Tania Bruguera: “I have many doubts about the validity of what is expected of social and political projects created by artists. Above all on the part of the institutions, given the infrastructures they have created in order to function […] Why do people want to see a conclusion when public work arts are not to be looked at, but to be understood, experiences, debated…?”.