Presentation

ARTS IN THE PUBLIC SPACE #2
Arts in the city : a political meaning

Thursday 20th and Friday 21st March 2014
Venue : UBO / Faculté Victor Ségalen – 20 rue Duquesne 29200 Brest

Click here to find out more about the full programme of the seminar
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Seminar organised by the University of Western Brittany, the Institute of Geo-Architecture, Le Fourneau, National Centre of Street Arts, and the European Fine Arts School of Brest, as part of DañsFabrik festival, organised by Le Quartz, Brest National Theatre (17th – 22nd March 2014).
A ZEPA2 network initiative – supported by Interreg IVA France (Channel) – England, co-financed by the ERDF.

Can artistic interventions reinvent the city ?

Seminar programme (in French only)

Public spaces, places of encounter and alterity, embody what makes society.
The current challenges faced by the city, and by the society as a whole, naturally hatch in such spaces.

But, the ’all planning and development’ temptation is one of normalising urban spaces, resulting from a willingness to anticipate, control and organise spaces and what could happen in them. It is an answer to a call for efficiency, sustainability and pacification. Every space has to cater for a specific use, whether it is a social use, or economic or other, including in an accumulativve way : space for mobility, space for social relations, space of representation for cities, in times of mutual competition and urban marketing, space for debate and citizen involvment, etc. This ultimate search for efficiency seems to go in hand with the loss of social and political meaning of the public space.

How, in these conditions, can the artist create a relationship with this civilized space ?
No matter what his position (resistance, transgression, irony, storytelling…), his role is to reinvent new approaches to comprehend and understand such places, against preconceptions and miscommunication.

Transnational and trans-disciplinary dimension of the seminar

It felt important that this seminar compares various points of view, practices and cultures, especially from other countries. The context of the ZEPA 2 European network in which this seminar is organised provides a transnational dimension, and so does the presence of UK-based artists, lecturers-researchers and students. This dimension complements the necessary trans-disciplinary dimension of the seminar that the topic requires. Consequently, the seminar will see various historians, sociologists, philosophers, architects, urban planners, local authority officers and, of course artists, share their views and opinions about the arts in the public place.

This seminar is also supported by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication as part of the partnership development programme between fine arts schools and universities.