Book launch
SOCIALLY ENGAGED ART AND THE NEO-LIBERAL CITY
MAPS (Master in Art and Public Space) is pleased to welcome you to the release of a new book by Cecilie Sachs Olsen, chief curator of Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019, which provides a practice-led investigation into the complexities and complicities of socially engaged art within an era of neoliberal urbanism.
Booklaunch: Socially engaged art and the Neo-liberal city
What are the social functions of art in the age of neoliberal urbanism? Based on her own artistic practice, the talk will address the challenges faced when struggling to adhere to the artistic aims of providing transformative experiences, while at the same time working within various neoliberal and institutional constraints and expectations. Rather than falling into totalizing narratives about how art practices are inevitably instrumentalised as they become part of neoliberal structures, logics and ambitions, the talk emphasizes the need to think more carefully about the politics of this practice in terms of how it constantly negotiates and reflects the subtle power relations that exist between artists and their collaborators in urban contexts.
About the speaker
Cecilie Sachs Olsen is a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for the Geo-Humanities at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the chief curator of Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019, and the co-founder of the urban performance collective, zURBS. Her work is practice-based and explores how artistic practice can be used as a framework to analyse and re-imagine urban space and politics.
The event is free and open to all.