Urgent Moments: Art and Social change: The Letting Space projects 20102020

(Paperback)

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Description

After first occupying vacant spaces in post-stock-market-crash Auckland in the mid-1990s, public art curators Letting Space re-emerged in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. Confronted by the thin net of social welfare, the waste of the capitalist system and the climate emergency, it brokered spaces for artists to think and act radically, outside gallery walls. This book chronicles the projects those artists drove. From a grocery store where everything was free to an ATM for depositing moods and a citizens water-testing lab, they added to the civic dialogue at a time when public space and media were increasingly commodified and under surveillance. Written by leading New Zealand writers and thinkers, including Pip Adam and Chris Kraus, Urgent Moments demonstrates the vital role artists can play in the pressing discussions of our times.

Author Bio

MARK AMERY is a writer, producer, curator and facilitator working across the public arts and media, with a focus on new forms of participation. Co-founder of Letting Space, Paekkriki.nz and Paekkriki 88.2FM, Amery works at Radio New Zealand and as a contributing arts editor for the Dominion-Post. He is a member of the Wellington City Council Public Art Panel and recently completed a public art project with Wellington social housing residents. AMBER CLAUSNER is a British artist, writer and events co-ordinator who lives in Te Whanganui-a-tara Wellington, Aotearoa, where she is a facilitator at an artist-run space and a member of Shared Lines Collaborative. Her art practice investigates human connection to the non-human world. SOPHIE JERRAM works with artists and communities between university, government and community roles. Her research focuses on how shared space and time are important actors in community landscapes.