Art 610 Research Paper (midterm)

For my research paper i want to focus on community based and public artwork. First it is important to establish what community based artwork is. In Kathie deNobriga and Matt Schwarzman's article Community-based Art for Social Change, they wrote, "Community-based art is a creative expression that emerges from communities of people working together to improve their individual and collective circumstances." they go on to say that, "Community-based art involves a wide range of social contexts and definitions, and includes an understanding of "communities" that includes not only geographical places, but also groups of people identified with historical or ethnic traditions, or dedicated to a particular belief or spirit."

Community-based art can also be referred to as Dialogical art because it hopes to engage communities in a sort of social conversation. One of its goals is to bring to light social conditions and challenges facing communities. One Piece that I am planning on doing more research on is entitled "the roof is on fire." The project was organized by Suzanne Lacy in 1994, and consisted of ov

er two hundred Oakland high school students sitting in cars(on a rooftop parking structure) carrying on their own improvisational dialogues on the problems facing young people of color in California. Over a thousand oakland residents and representatives of local government were invited to participate and overhear the conversations that were taking place. The topics ranged from media stereotypes, racial profiling, and underfunded schools.

Another goal of community-based artwork is to educate and get the community to participate. This can be done in many ways through performances, community workshops, public debates and so on. There was a project in Hamburg entitled park fiction, where artists invited the community to come up with ideas of how to utilize the park space. they provided supplies, i.e. paper, crayons, markers, clay, etc. The dialogue is not created by the artists themselves but the interaction of the community that partakes.