From art interventions to communal rituals: Site-specific Urban Practices for Cocreation, Theorizing, Care
Hanna Musiol, PhD
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

CICULARTs aims to promote new methods, pedagogies, inclusive arts, and (as) barometers or “vital signs” of urban sustainability and “survivance,” and this talk addresses the two working groups’ combined interest in artistic urban practice and theory (Varghese; Vizenor). Specifically, they foreground pluriversal theories and artistic practice as foundations of more inclusive urban art design (Partham) and as pedagogical models for urban actions devoted to equity and cocreation (Grandoit-Šutka; Lambert). This talk moves away from a view of urban theory as mostly Western, white, masculinists, and written in majority languages toward a critical pedagogy pluriversal approach in which inclusive theory and art practice are inseparable, and are generated and rehearsed collectively with diverse communities, via different media and arts, in conversation and conflict with dominant epistemologies. This talk also addresses a major challenge of this approach: the archives of urban art interventions are ephemeral, the theories we rely on are as exclusionary as our cities, and the Transforming individual art interventions into community ritual poses major challenges. How can we promote different, sustainable, and communal kinds of urban thinking, learning, and gathering?
Drawing from the work of Theaster Gates, AbdouMaliq Simone, Elina Alatalo, Sara Zewde, Laura Kern, Klaske Havik, Eliane Brum, and other radical urban thinkers and art practitioners, this talk focuses on recent examples of art-based urban space-making initiatives that bring together local and transient, Indigenous, queer, dis-abled, Afropean, immigrant, senior thinker-residents (in solidarity ceremonies led by Mapuche and Sami artivists in Trondheim; Søstrene Suse’s Radiokino decolonial listening zones; WIMBLU’s transmedia ecological seances, walkshops and counter-cartographies across Europe, and more). It will conclude with a reflection about how our COST Action could recognize such nonacademic work and epistemologies as tools and pedagogies for non-necrotic urban futuring that “de-segregate” space, artistic practice, and thought (Thiong’o; Brim; Maki; Khosravi); draw ethically from participatory and utopian urban theorizing (inclusive public recitations, listening sessions, speculative street theatre, mixmedia installations, etc.) as a method for organizing, thinking, and building (Dominique Hétu et al., Rault and Cowan; Khan); and promote urban bio(cultural)diversity space-making and sharing practices via the COST activities.
Image: An Afternoon of Living Stories: a transmedia ecological storytelling performance led WIMBLU’s Carolina May and Alessandra Baltadano. Co-organized with Trondheim Kunsthall, Narrating Sustainability, and Just Pedagogies, NTNU. Photo by Jan T.H. Ennker
Kunsthall Trondheim, Trondheim, Norway.