Discussion led by: Dr. Susan Hansen (AU/UK)

Panel: Théo Le Du Fuentes aka Cosmografik (FR), Jacob Kimvall (SE), Carnival Union (NO) and Ståle Stenslie (NO)

 

From the events of May 68 to the Berlin and Palestine walls to Syria, unsanctioned art has often been used to give voice to the voiceless – providing an outlet for expression that is suppressed by regimes and dictators in all its other forms. What parallels are there between these historical acts of resistance and the wider street art movement, which today operates within an increasingly privatized and controlled public space? What can we learn from studying the ethnographic, anthropological and sociological implications of sanctioned and unsanctioned art practice in both the virtual and physical space, and what does this tell us about the power of art to change the world?

 

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Dr. Susan Hansen is Convenor of the Visual Methods Group and Chair of the Forensic Psychology Research Group in the Department of Psychology at Middlesex University, London; Convenor of Art on the Streets, an annual symposium held at the Institute of Contemporary Art; and serves on the Editorial boards of the academic journals Street & Urban Creativity and the Nuart Journal.

 

Théo Le Du Fuentes aka Cosmografik is a Paris-based interactive designer, whose work covers video games as well as animation and interactive art. He is a member of the History From Below network and RaspouTeam collective in Paris, who in 2011 celebrated the 140th anniversary of the Paris Commune by transmitting the memory of the revolution – a hidden episode in the history of the city – in the public space where freedoms are becoming significantly reduced.

 

Jacob Kimvall is an art critic, art historian, and amateur graffiti writer, based in Stockholm. He received his PhD in art history with the dissertation The G-Word: Virtuosity and Violation, Negotiating and Transforming Graffiti (2014), which examined the historiography of graffiti and suggests that this subcultural phenomenon should be understood as jointly produced by subcultural and institutional agents.

 

Carnival Union (NO) is an artistic collaborative project based on an understanding of creativity, play and artistic practice as revolutionary tools for creating new fellowships, new language and new ideas about a possible future. Its members are Hanan Benammar, Gidsken Braadlie, Camilla Dahl, Marius von der Fehr, Lisa Pacini, Pia Maria Roll and Venke Aure.

 

Ståle Stenslie works as an artist, curator and researcher specializing in experimental media art and interaction experiences. His aesthetic focus is on art and artistic expressions that challenge ordinary ways of perceiving the world. Through his practice he asks the questions we tend to avoid – or where the answers lie in the shadows of existence. Keywords of his practice are somaesthetics, unstable media, transgression and numinousness.

 

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