Which Public Space for Critical Artistic Practices? Chantal Mouffe, Cork Caucus, 2005
Which Public Space for Critical Artistic Practices?
Chantal Mouffe,
Cork Caucus,
2005
There are two very different meanings of ‘the public’ that one can roughly distinguish as public in the sense which in German is referred to as Öffentlichkeit, and public as audience, Publikum. Both are of interest for the kind of reflection that I want to develop in this lecture. As we will see later, they should be envisaged as the two sides of a process of discursive construction. It is clear, for instance, that through the establishment of certain types of public spaces, artistic practices contribute to the creation of a de-termined public, a specific audience. Public art is not, according to my ap-proach, art in the public space, but an art that institutes a public space, a space of common action among people. One of the questions that I want to address is, for instance, what kind of public should progressive art institu-tions try to constitute and what kind of public spaces are needed to that effect?