Public art as conversation piece: scaling art, public space and audience

Previous scholarship on public art has surveyed – in a usually discursive and at times overly generalised mode – how experts assume or ascribe a plethora of roles and (mis)uses regarding art in various political, economic, social and cultural geographical contexts. Public-art studies, nevertheless, are still remiss in indicating how experts socially negotiate such capacities of public art within in-vivo micropublics (cf. Amin, 2002): the socio-culturally diverse (micro)sites of everyday encounter. This paper attempts to move beyond “representational” knowledges by engaging with experts’ lived experiences of contemporary public art along socio-spatial scales of three conceptual anchor points: art, public space and audience. Based on participatory, expert-led research (2012) in the context of Rotterdam, the paper analyses experts’ lived “agonistic” encounters (Mouffe, 2000) subsistent in public-art practice. This practice ranges from the bodily experiential scale of the artist, enabler and user of public space to community mentalities and interventions, local cultural policy directions and state governmentalities and praxes. The empirical analysis reveals how the experts’ socially negotiated images and imaginations of public art’s roles and (mis)uses critically attend to artistic production, the consumption of public space and audience involvement in a socio-spatially interlaced and multiscalar fashion. The paper argues that the pursued non-representational method can be employed in research, policy and practice to raise deeper awareness within the expert sphere about everyday encounter with public art and ensuing issues of audiencing in particular. La recherche sur l’art public a souvent décrit – de manière le plus souvent discursive et parfois trop généralisante – comment les experts supposent et attribuent quantité de rôles et (més)usages à l’art dans des contextes géographiques, politiques, économiques, sociaux et culturels variés. Ces analyses négligent toutefois la manière dont ces experts négocient socialement les potentialités de l’art public au sein des micropublics (cf. Amin, 2002) dans les (micro)sites de la rencontre quotidienne, lesquels varient en fonction du contexte socio-culturel. Cet article tente d’aller au-delà des connaissances sur les représentations, en envisageant l’expérience vécue de l’art public contemporain par les experts selon les perspectives socio-spatiales de trois points d’ancrage conceptuels: l’art, l’espace public et le public. L’analyse repose sur un travail de recherche participatif et d’expertise mené à Rotterdam (2012), ayant pour objet le vécu des experts relatif aux rencontres « agonistes » (Mouffe, 2000) associées à la pratique de l’art public. Cette pratique concerne tant l’expérience corporelle des mentalités communautaires et des interventions par l’artiste, le facilitateur et l’utilisateur de l’espace public, que les politiques culturelles locales, les praxis et les idéologies gouvernementales. L’étude empirique révèle comment les représentations socialement négociées que possèdent les experts du rôle et des (més)usages de l’art public participent à la production artistique, à la consommation de l’espace public et à l’implication des publics, sur le plan socio-spatial et de façon multiscalaire. L’article soutient que la méthode mise en place, allant au-delà des représentations, peut être utilisée dans la recherche, la politique et la pratique afin de sensibiliser la sphère des experts à la confrontation quotidienne à l’art public, et plus spécifiquement aux questions liées à tout ce qui concerne le public

Digital geographies of public art: New global politics

Responding to geography’s digital and political turns, this article presents an original critical synthesis of the under-examined niche of networked geographies of public-art practices in today’s politicised digital culture. This article advances insights into digital public art as politics, and its role in politicising online public spaces with foci on: how digital technologies have instigated do-it-yourself modes for the co-creation of art content within peer-to-peer contexts; the way art is ‘stretched’ and experienced in/across the digital public sphere; and how user-(co-)created content has become subject to (mis)uses, simultaneously informed by digital ‘artivism’ and a new global politics infused with populism

Embodied techno-space: An auto-ethnography on affective citizenship in the techno electronic dance music scene

This study examines auto-ethnographical experience with bodily participation in spaces of techno electronic dance music (EDM). The article engages with how inner- and inter-corporeal lived experience in techno-space constructs affective citizenship on the very personal level of the participant-researcher. In this context, the article attends to the underexplored field of how affective citizenship is attained and valued along embodied knowledge of subcultural capital in the EDM scene. It particularly addresses its overlooked gendered/sexual and technologically mediated (e)motional body. Drawing on a feminist scholar-artist method, the article renders embodied encounters with techno-space through evocative vignettes that include affective writing, a drawing and introspective poetic revelation. This method aims to convey embodied knowledge of techno-space as creative transformative experience beyond conventional modes of retrospective narration. The article concludes with two key lived experiences of affective citizenship: first, at times the gendered/sexual and cyborgian body was mobilised into a state of emotionally shared publicness that co-produced techno-space. Second, (inter)actions in techno-space incited subcultural capital as a set of tacit knowledge assets (including affective, empathic and therapeutic qualities) to be accumulated over techno events and to be occasionally transferred to inclusive participation in the everyday life

(Re)Making Public Campus Art: Connecting the University, Publics and the City

Public campus art in the U.K. is predominantly a postwar phenomenon and can be interpreted as artworks situated in university spaces with free access to its audience: any public users — where the multiplicity of such audience defines them as “publics”: communities of interest. Public art’s ontology of “publicness” is complex: what is “public” and who are the “publics”? The local, theme and form of art in “public” space is contested along dualist conceptions of public/private, indoor/outdoor, closed/open, permanent/temporary, decorative/interactive, past/future, space/place, online/offline, and so on and so forth. It may moreover span any material, digital, performative and socially engaged, practice-based work and multimedia beyond more traditional sculptural artworks. This article analyses how public campus art has traditionally related to historic university agendas and campus communities, but has recently provided a platform for far-reaching public engagement beyond the campus, thus reaching new audiences

Tocilizumab in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial

Background: In this study, we aimed to evaluate the effects of tocilizumab in adult patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 with both hypoxia and systemic inflammation. Methods: This randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy [RECOVERY]), is assessing several possible treatments in patients hospitalised with COVID-19 in the UK. Those trial participants with hypoxia (oxygen saturation <92% on air or requiring oxygen therapy) and evidence of systemic inflammation (C-reactive protein ≥75 mg/L) were eligible for random assignment in a 1:1 ratio to usual standard of care alone versus usual standard of care plus tocilizumab at a dose of 400 mg–800 mg (depending on weight) given intravenously. A second dose could be given 12–24 h later if the patient's condition had not improved. The primary outcome was 28-day mortality, assessed in the intention-to-treat population. The trial is registered with ISRCTN (50189673) and ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04381936). Findings: Between April 23, 2020, and Jan 24, 2021, 4116 adults of 21 550 patients enrolled into the RECOVERY trial were included in the assessment of tocilizumab, including 3385 (82%) patients receiving systemic corticosteroids. Overall, 621 (31%) of the 2022 patients allocated tocilizumab and 729 (35%) of the 2094 patients allocated to usual care died within 28 days (rate ratio 0·85; 95% CI 0·76–0·94; p=0·0028). Consistent results were seen in all prespecified subgroups of patients, including those receiving systemic corticosteroids. Patients allocated to tocilizumab were more likely to be discharged from hospital within 28 days (57% vs 50%; rate ratio 1·22; 1·12–1·33; p<0·0001). Among those not receiving invasive mechanical ventilation at baseline, patients allocated tocilizumab were less likely to reach the composite endpoint of invasive mechanical ventilation or death (35% vs 42%; risk ratio 0·84; 95% CI 0·77–0·92; p<0·0001). Interpretation: In hospitalised COVID-19 patients with hypoxia and systemic inflammation, tocilizumab improved survival and other clinical outcomes. These benefits were seen regardless of the amount of respiratory support and were additional to the benefits of systemic corticosteroids. Funding: UK Research and Innovation (Medical Research Council) and National Institute of Health Research

Convalescent plasma in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised controlled, open-label, platform trial

Background: Many patients with COVID-19 have been treated with plasma containing anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. We aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of convalescent plasma therapy in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19. Methods: This randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy [RECOVERY]) is assessing several possible treatments in patients hospitalised with COVID-19 in the UK. The trial is underway at 177 NHS hospitals from across the UK. Eligible and consenting patients were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive either usual care alone (usual care group) or usual care plus high-titre convalescent plasma (convalescent plasma group). The primary outcome was 28-day mortality, analysed on an intention-to-treat basis. The trial is registered with ISRCTN, 50189673, and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04381936. Findings: Between May 28, 2020, and Jan 15, 2021, 11558 (71%) of 16287 patients enrolled in RECOVERY were eligible to receive convalescent plasma and were assigned to either the convalescent plasma group or the usual care group. There was no significant difference in 28-day mortality between the two groups: 1399 (24%) of 5795 patients in the convalescent plasma group and 1408 (24%) of 5763 patients in the usual care group died within 28 days (rate ratio 1·00, 95% CI 0·93–1·07; p=0·95). The 28-day mortality rate ratio was similar in all prespecified subgroups of patients, including in those patients without detectable SARS-CoV-2 antibodies at randomisation. Allocation to convalescent plasma had no significant effect on the proportion of patients discharged from hospital within 28 days (3832 [66%] patients in the convalescent plasma group vs 3822 [66%] patients in the usual care group; rate ratio 0·99, 95% CI 0·94–1·03; p=0·57). Among those not on invasive mechanical ventilation at randomisation, there was no significant difference in the proportion of patients meeting the composite endpoint of progression to invasive mechanical ventilation or death (1568 [29%] of 5493 patients in the convalescent plasma group vs 1568 [29%] of 5448 patients in the usual care group; rate ratio 0·99, 95% CI 0·93–1·05; p=0·79). Interpretation: In patients hospitalised with COVID-19, high-titre convalescent plasma did not improve survival or other prespecified clinical outcomes. Funding: UK Research and Innovation (Medical Research Council) and National Institute of Health Research

Does cultural policy matter in public-art production? The Netherlands and Flanders compared, 1945 – present

Cultural policy has produced divergent intentions underlying the direction of public art since its advent in Western Europe in 1945. Literature has feebly demonstrated the extent to which differentialities in cultural policy have affected the production of public artworks over time and space. This paper fills this gap as regards Amsterdam and Ghent, cities that are situated in different national institutional contexts. It shows dissimilarity—in that one finds a relatively higher number of public artworks, more spatially dispersed and more diversified public artworks in Amsterdam than in Ghent, which is particularly a result of institutional differences—and similarity between these cities, in terms of initiatives by local communities and arts actors, irrespective of the local policy context. These results provide insight into policy concern with public-art production and the everyday practices and cultural traditions that underpin it.