Urban Encounters: Art and the Public

Edited by Martha Radice and Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier

McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017

Public art is on the urban agenda. Given recent claims about the importance of creativity to urban prosperity, opportunities for installing or performing art in the city have multiplied. As cities strive to appear culturally dynamic, the stakes of artistic production rise higher than ever.

Exploring the interaction between art and the public in Canadian cities, Urban Encounters features writing by artists, architects, curators, anthropologists, geographers, and urban studies specialists. They show how people and places affect the structure and content of public artworks, what kinds of urban spaces and socialities are generated through art, and how to investigate and interpret encounters between art and its viewers in the city. Discussing a variety of art forms, including mobile cinemas, street improvisation, audiovisual investigations, and assembled objects, the contributors treat public artworks not just as aesthetic installations, but as agents that participate in the social and cultural evolution of cities.

Using original, hands-on approaches, Urban Encounters reveals how art in the urban public space generates encounters that can transform both the city itself and the ways that people relate to it.

http://www.mqup.ca/urban-encounters-products-9780773550063.php