Nato Thompson (ed.): Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011 (2012)

“Over the past twenty years, an abundance of art forms have emerged that use aesthetics to affect social dynamics. These works are often produced by collectives or come out of a community context; they emphasize participation, dialogue, and action, and appear in situations ranging from theater to activism to urban planning to visual art to health care. Engaged with the texture of living, these art works often blur the line between art and life. This book offers the first global portrait of a complex and exciting mode of cultural production—one that has virtually redefined contemporary art practice.

Living as Form grew out of a major exhibition at Creative Time in New York City. Like the exhibition, the book is a landmark survey of more than 100 projects selected by a thirty-person curatorial advisory team; each project is documented by a selection of color images. The artists include the Danish collective Superflex, who empower communities to challenge corporate interest; Turner Prize nominee Jeremy Deller, creator of socially and politically charged performance works; Women on Waves, who provide abortion services and information to women in regions where the procedure is illegal; and Santiágo Cirugeda, an architect who builds temporary structures to solve housing problems.

Living as Form contains commissioned essays from noted critics and theorists who look at this phenomenon from a global perspective and broaden the range of what constitutes this form.”

Contributing authors: Claire Bishop, Carol Becker, Teddy Cruz, Brian Holmes, Shannon Jackson, Maria Lind, Anne Pasternak, Nato Thompson.

Publisher Creative Time, New York, and MIT Press, 2012
ISBN 9780262017343, 0262017342
259 pages

Reviews: Tom Snow (review31, n.d.), Wendy Vogel (Brooklyn Rail, 2012), Jennie Klein (PAJ, 2015), Kim Yasuda (Public Art Dialogue, 2013), Régine Debatty (We Make Money Not Art, 2012), Mark Gardner (Urban Design Review, 2012), Michael DiRisio (Public Journal, 2014), Danielle Child (Reviews in Culture, 2012), Andreas Hudelist (Theater Forschung, 2014).
Exh. reviews: Jens Hoffmann (Frieze, 2012), Ben Davis (International Socialist Review, 2012), Rachel Daniell (emisferica, 2012).

Project website, incl. Social Practice archive (300+ projects)
Exhibition
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (19 MB)
Internet Archive (added on 2023-7-7)

Suzanne Lacy (ed.): Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art (1995)

“Departing from the traditional definition of public art as sculpture in parks and plazas, new genre public art brings artists into direct engagement with audiences to deal with the compelling issues of our time. This is the first definitive collection of writings on the subject by critics, artists, and curators who are pioneers in the field. Includes essays by Judith Baca, Estella Conwill Májozo, Suzi Gablik, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Mary Jane Jacob, Allen Kaprow, Jeff Kelley, Lucy Lippard, Patricia C. Phillips, and Arlene Raven.”

Publisher Bay Press, Seattle, 1995
ISBN 0941920305, 9780941920308
296 pages

Reviews: Kirkus Rev (1994), Gaye Green (Art J, 1999), Carole Gold Calo (Public Art Dialogue, 2012).
Commentary: Stephanie Smith (Afterall, 2011, PDF).

Editor
WorldCat

PDF (49 MB, updated on 2018-6-22)

Sarah E.K. Smith: General Idea: Life & Work (2016) [English, French]

“Provocateurs General Idea (active 1969–1994) invented their history and made it reality: ‘We wanted to be famous, glamourous and rich. That is to say we wanted to be artists and we knew that if we were famous and glamourous we could say we were artists and we would be. … We did and we are. We are famous, glamourous artists.’ The group—comprised of AA Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge Zontal—met in Toronto in the late 1960s and went on to live and work together for twenty-five years. General Idea ceased activities in 1994, with the untimely deaths of Partz and Zontal from AIDS-related causes.”

Publisher Art Canada Institute, 2016
Open access
ISBN 9781487100926
138 pages

Publisher

English: PDF, PDF (28 MB), HTML (includes videos)
French: PDF, PDF (28 MB), HTML (includes videos)