FROM SOLID TO SOCIAL: A meeting between social art and mid-century suburbs

Abstract

The site-specific and the participatory arts are both interested in creating art at sites where there usually are none. Social art started as grassroots movements in residential areas for the less well off. Today it has grown into a great genre, still remaining its main focus on areas of similar conditions. With its roots in the 1950’s and 1960’s liberation from the exhibition space and feminist theory, the methods of social arts have been implemented in everything from community gardening to large-scale residential projects. The purpose of this study is to explore how social art has affected public space in urban post-war areas. The thesis intends to explore social art movements through case studies of the two suburbs Rågsved, south of Stockholm and Råby, west of Västerås. The study is done against a historical background of the site-specific and social art field and is guided by two research questions. The result shows that there are very high cultural values in the post-war suburbs, but also a dissonance between governmental valuation and poor management by the property owners and local politics. The public social art reflects ideas present in the society at large, this study identifies the most distinct idea as the expression of democracy in public space. Highly political goals such as reducing segregation or discrimination have not proved successful and instead risk instrumentalizing the arts. The project format that many of these works use creates precarious working conditions for those in the field as well as a short-term presence on site. On a local level, successful projects can create a good public environment, strengthen social ties within the neighborhood and create visions of spaces with subversive power that wouldn’t have the chance to exist otherwise.