This course will explore how digital tools are and can be used in socially engaged art practice, where art and creative work intersect directly with people and civic life. Students will be asked to propose several projects as thought experiments, and fully realize one online/digital socially engaged project. The different definitions of “socially engaged practice” will be reviewed and discussed, including discussion of “best practices” when in conversation with different communities, and the politics of how we interact, as well as how we approach the physical as well as social space around us.
We will work on how digital tools have been used in socially engaged art and how they could be used further, and experiment with how online life can functions as a public space. We will have some meetings in public spaces, and there will be some writing and reading as well as practical applications of methodology, as well as two or three guest lecturers.
By Clarinda Mac Low