Conflictual sociability? A paradoxical approach to politicized street theatre

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoinette Burchill
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Wizard Of Oz ◽  
The Public ◽  
Effective Pedagogy ◽  
Street Theatre ◽  
Paradoxical Thinking ◽  
Practice Based Research

In Agonistics (2013), Chantal Mouffe highlights sociability and notes its potential for artists in devising agonistic counter-hegemonic performances. However, sociability as an isolated factor is unlikely to produce politicized dissent. Instead, therefore, a politicized form of conflictual sociability is created by applying Mouffe’s notion of a ‘conflictual consensus’ (an agreement between opponents to disagree) to art practice. By applying paradoxical thinking to the performance of dissent in the public realm, the article argues for sociability in service of politicized critique. The potential of conflictual sociability is examined through guerrilla street theatre performances, an artform with the capacity to generate unauthorized and participatory incursions into the urban public realm. Firstly, via autoethnographic reflections upon a practice-based research project, The Wizard of Oz (2015) performed in London, United Kingdom; and secondly, in analysis of Dread Scott’s Money to Burn (2010) performance in Wall Street, New York, United States. Conflictual sociability offers a novel methods-led process of engaging agonistically with passers-by (publics) and transforming them into activated participants. Because it is engaging, conflictual sociability creates spaces of public dialogue that antagonistic conflict potentially shuts down. This reveals an effective pedagogy for facilitating agonistic politicized dissent through performative practices in the public realm.

Mutable Matter: Using Sensory Methods in Public Engagement with Nanotechnology

Leonardo ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Last
Keyword(s):  
Public Engagement ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Pilot Program ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
The Public ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Future

Mutable Matter is an experimental public engagement pilot program that seeks to enable non-scientists to explore and co-imagine the future of nanotechnology. Located at the intersection of geography, science communication and art practice, Mutable Matter is intended as a starting point for examining playful sensory engagement methods bridging tangible public and intangible scientific spaces. The project both challenges the role of non-scientists as mere commentators on pre-decided innovation trajectories and draws attention to the way scientific information is creatively encountered in the public realm.

me to Wall Street several times since the war. When dis-cussing these investments I found it fascinating to discover that the ablest minds in Wall Street are still conscious of the 'Covered Wagon' in framing their plans. Sitting in air-conditioned offices, aided by every gadget that modern science can devise, it at first seems paradoxical that bankers and brokers should be talking as a matter of course of opportunities for further expansion not only in the West but in other areas. For example, in 1954 I was told that the United States Steel Corporation was putting up a new plant in New Jersey 'to improve its competitive position in the Eastern States'. The idea of such an industrial giant being still in the least bit concerned about competition was frankly an eye-opener. Similarly, it was news to learn that most market agreements between the oil companies had been torn up, so that the public was getting the benefit of full competition in supplies and prices. But the Covered Wagon was most in evidence in discussing the shares of public utility companies, banks and stores. 'Continuous growth ahead' was predicted for a power company in Delaware; on the other hand a similar undertaking in another State was said to have no such prospects, since it was operating in an area where conditions were highly regulated. While the shares of certain New York banks offered small growth prospects, greater appreciation was expected in the shares of banks in Cleveland, Ohio and Kansas City. Those in California were not favoured, as the tremendous expansion there had still to be digested. Another factor in Wall Street is the increasing influence of

2012 ◽  
pp. 80-87
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Kansas City ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
The Public ◽  
United States Steel Corporation ◽  
Power Company ◽  
Utility Companies ◽  
Growth Prospects

Privatization and Protest: Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Toronto, and the Occupation of Public Space in a Democracy

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Kohn
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Collective Control ◽  
The People ◽  
Institutional Structures

This article examines the legal and normative debates about the Occupy Toronto movement in order to illuminate the issues raised by Occupy Wall Street. It challenges the view that the occupation of parks and plazas was an illegitimate privatization of public space. In both New York City and Toronto, the courts relied on a theory that Habermas called “German Hobbesianism.” This sovereigntist theory of the public was used to justify removing the protesters and disbanding the encampments. The alternative is what I call the populist model of the public, a term which describes the political mobilization of the people outside the institutional structures of the state. While my focus is on public space, I suggest the appropriation of space was the most visible aspect of a broader call for collective control of the common wealth of society. In other words, we should understand the occupations synecdochally as struggles over the meaning and power of public and private.

The Public Utteraton Machines: Recording What People Think of Public Art in New York City

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 48-50
Author(s):  
Rebecca Hackemann
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Public Art ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
The Public ◽  
Object Based ◽  
The City

In 2015–2016 the author installed interactive public artworks on sidewalks in Brooklyn and Queens using ordinary city permits. The locations were chosen in counterbalance to the dominant choices of location for public art in New York, which tends to be placed in Manhattan or other tourist-concentrated areas. The works are entitled the Public Utteraton Machines and enable passersby to utter their opinions about other public art in the city as well as art’s role in society. The device’s earpiece recorded over 100 open-ended narratives and 391 responses to quantitative data questions via an integrated e-paper display screen. This public art project combines social practice with object-based public art into a conceptual public art practice that forms a commons or civic art. Sound archives of the responses can be found at local libraries in Queens and Brooklyn and at http://utteraton.com/ .

Who are Those Journalists? (And Why are They Saying Such Critical Things?)

1985 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Rothman ◽  
S Robert Lichter
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Magazines ◽  
Select Group ◽  
Broadcasting System ◽  
American Media ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Wall Street Journal

The American Media The media have become one of the most powerful influences on our information hungry society. Their new prominence has been propelled by the rise of print and television outlets with national impact. This select group includes the three television networks and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), three national news magazines (Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report) and the major American newspapers — the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

scholarly journals OCCUPY BIENNALE? SOCIALLY-ENGAGED ART PRACTICE AND ART INSTITUTION

ARTis ON ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 171-177
Author(s):  
Urszula Staszkop
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
The Political ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
Activist Art ◽  
Participatory Practices

The political phenomenon of Occupy Wall Street obtained the global attention in the fall of 2011 with its encampment in the Zuccotti Park (New York). As the movement grew, there also seemed to be an aesthetic component to it revealed in socially-engaged, participatory practices. Those presuppositions provoked the debate focused on the emerging issue of activist art and on the art’s capability to transmit the aims of political protest. Consequently, curators and art institutions attempted to endorse the Occupy movement, while incorporating it into various art events. This text seeks to explore those issues through the analyses of emerging discourse on socially-engaged practices and its existence within art institution on the example of Berlin Biennale 7.

Hospitals: N.Y. Appellate Court Denies Move to Privatize Public Hospital

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-203
Author(s):  
Robert Chatham
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Public Health System ◽  
Municipal Hospital ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Benefit ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Benefit Corporation ◽  
The City

The Court of Appeals of New York held, in Council of the City of New York u. Giuliani, slip op. 02634, 1999 WL 179257 (N.Y. Mar. 30, 1999), that New York City may not privatize a public city hospital without state statutory authorization. The court found invalid a sublease of a municipal hospital operated by a public benefit corporation to a private, for-profit entity. The court reasoned that the controlling statute prescribed the operation of a municipal hospital as a government function that must be fulfilled by the public benefit corporation as long as it exists, and nothing short of legislative action could put an end to the corporation's existence.In 1969, the New York State legislature enacted the Health and Hospitals Corporation Act (HHCA), establishing the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) as an attempt to improve the New York City public health system. Thirty years later, on a renewed perception that the public health system was once again lacking, the city administration approved a sublease of Coney Island Hospital from HHC to PHS New York, Inc. (PHS), a private, for-profit entity.

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