Terminology

The notion of socially engaged art practice can be interpreted very literally as art that involves forms of social interaction. So, for instance, Pablo Helguera, in his excellent small instructional handbook, Education for Socially Engaged Art, explains that “what characterizes socially engaged art is its dependence on social intercourse as a factor of its existence”(2011, p.2). Yet at the same time the notion of “engagement” clearly has wider implications. It suggests not just interaction between people per se, but a broader commitment to the field of the social. An artist is “socially engaged” in the same manner that they may be “politically engaged” – it suggests a passionate ethical orientation. Here the notion of the social extends beyond simply thinking of groups of people to involve something much larger and less obviously dependent upon particular practical contexts of interaction. It involves a vision of society and of the social process. It involves notions of dialogue, political struggle and freedom. The social represents a flawed and problematic terrain, but also one of infinite potential, in which a series of very general hopes are variously hatched, maintained and dashed. The problem for me with the notion of socially engaged art is that it conflates these very different senses of social engagement – the literal and the political – without properly acknowledging their difference and tension. At one level socially engaged art is banally reduced to group participatory interaction, while at another level the politico-ethical implications of these various forms of interaction are stretched to breaking point. There is a need, at the very least, to recognise that participation is not a sufficient form of social engagement, nor even the only means by which dimensions of more broadly conceived engagement are possible.