What are current politics of participation in arts—in making, curating, collecting, critiquing, programming art?
How do power and social practice intersect, especially in transmedia environments?
What are parameters of diversity or diversifying participation?
All aspects of participating in art can be politicized. An artist can create art that is viewed as a political statement (whether or not they mean it to be one). Art can be used by those involved in politics or created to show the artists personal views on politics and cultural life. Curating art can also have a political element to it. The way one sets up an art show, who is invited to be in the show… it can all be a political statement of its own kind, telling about ones taste and ones personal views. The same can be said for critiquing and programming, they are dictating what is “art.” But there is a movement against such high handed ideals. People, cities, and certain regions are now dictating what art is for themselves. When talking about politics and art, it comes down to peoples’ views: if something is tasteful and can be classified as real “art.” or if the art or presentation of it is showing political views directly.
Power and social practice intersect quite often. The power to get people to participate in art and to be part of their communities, is nebulous. People may be attracted to be socially active because a person with influence (power) like a celebrity, a local celebrity, an advocate, etc is telling them to be. Transmedia extends social practice. You can be active in your region (or even the world) without leaving your home by looking at events on Facebook, reading the news online, or watching a report on television. Transmedia creates a whole new way to be part of your community (or any community) but in a very individual way. It promotes practice, albeit a very different type of practice and participation, but nonetheless more people can be involved in social situations from their own contexts.
Diversity is hard to fully define. To most it means many groups of people living together, everyone in these groups being involved in the community, and everyone being accepted as a member of their local world. Diversity can include many age groups, many races, different sexuality, different religions, or anything that people see as a definition of themselves. To diversify participation, groups need to go into more diverse neighborhoods and literally expand into more areas in which they haven’t worked before. If a non-profit expands into a fairly homologous neighborhood, they can offset this by extending into multiple areas with different types of homologous populations. In basic terms, to diversify participation groups need to grow, serve more people, and more types of people.