Some of the most innovative art of the past decade has been created far outside conventional galleries and museums. In a parking garage in Oakland, California; on a pleasure boat on the Lake of Zurich in Switzerland; at a public market in Chiang Mai, Thailand - artists operating at the intersection of art and cultural activism have been developing new forms of collaboration with diverse audiences and communities. Their projects have addressed such issues as political conflict in Northern Ireland, gang violence on Chicago's West Side, and the problems of sex workers in Switzerland. Provocative, accessible, and engaging, this book, one of the first full-length studies on the topic, situates these socially conscious projects historically, relates them to key issues in contemporary art and art theory, and offers a unique critical framework for understanding them. Grant Kester discusses a disparate network of artists and collectives - including The Art of Change, Helen and Newton Harrison, Littoral, Suzanne Lacy, Stephen Willats, and WochenKlausur - united by a desire to create new forms of understanding through creative dialogue that crosses boundaries of race, religion, and culture. Kester traces the origins of these works in the conceptual art and feminist performance art of the 1960s and 1970s and draws from the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, Jurgen Habermas, and others as he explores the ways in which these artists corroborate and challenge many of the key principles of avant-garde art and art theory.

About the Author
Grant H. Kester is Professor of Art History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Art, Activism and Oppositionality: Essays from Afterimage , and The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context.

Reviews
"A brilliant critical re-evaluaton of art critical methodologies." * Leonardo *
"A much-needed discussion regarding a practice that is too often ignored. We need a dialogue about what community art is and could be . . . [and] need more discussions like Kester's that question the traditional roles of artists and audiences." * Public Art Review *
"Conversation Pieces nobly records and analyzes dialogical art with a respect that very few critics have offered thus far." * Flaunt *



Book Information
ISBN 9780520275942
Author Grant H. Kester
Format Paperback
Page Count 264
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 18mm