Occupying Public Networks

Public art has been much debated in terms of its ability to reach beyond the institutions of art and engage wider constituencies. Commentators on “new genre public art”, such as Miwon Kwon, have expressed concerns about “socially-engaged” art operating as a form of social work. The well-meaning artist unwittingly becomes part of a cynical strategy where communities and social relations are effectively commodified. Through such means, critical arts practice is subsumed into a neoliberal agenda that corresponds to the social inclusion agendas of governmental public policy that attempt to gloss over social inequality and results in the exclusionary practices of urban regeneration. We are reminded of the uncompromising message of the public art billboard poster by the art collective Freee, that recursively states: “The economic function of public art is to increase the value of private property.”