Action Art

Given the current crisis, in which art in a classical sense seems to have lost ground, Aura Bălănescu’s course proposes a rethinking of the artistic process through the critical lens of the the 20th century avant-garde artists, in order to observe / analyse / reveal the problems in our society (Les Levine, Art Can See, 1970) and to generate new fields of coexistence in a global ecology (Joseph Beuys, Social Sculpture, 1970). Therefore, the artist is no longer a maker of aesthetic objects and instead becomes an ecologist who oversees a macro-transformation of man and of reality in general. At the same time, in the context of telecommunications, the artist acquires the role of a design scientist that conveys the relationship between art, science and technology with versatility, to create a work that has a global impact and which allows continuous enrichment through the contribution of each and every one of us.

Participants will creatively experience all these concepts and practices in global art observatories generated on the ArcGIS interactive mapping platform, which has also been used to generate COVID-19 evolution maps in an almost aesthetic dimension. They will transpose their art on the time-space scale that encompasses the manifestation of society’s problems in a so-called <critical art area>. This idea paraphrases one of the most anticipated contemporary art exhibitions, Critical Zones (ZKM Karlsruhe, July 24, 2020), where artists and scientists discuss issues of a social, political, economic and cultural nature, as well as the ethical and epistemological changes that could lead to solving the critical situation of planet Earth (Observatory of Earthly Politics).