Social art and resilience after the crash: plugging holes and making whole?

ABSTRACT

This provocation discusses two post-2008 cases of resilience discourse in applied performance contexts. The discussion of the first case focuses on how a variant of resilience discourse legitimises the restructuring of local public services and welfare by naturalising this process. This first discourse will be contrasted to an instance of resilience discourse produced by artists aligned to Left-libertarian social movements. Despite clear differences, I argue that the naturalising of social relations at work in this second discourse and case should also be problematised, if social art is to present an alternative to the status quo.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• permaculture
• policy
• social art
• utopia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Arts Council England is the main non-departmental governmental body responsible for the allocation public funds in England.

2 There are a number of thorny issues relating to permacultural ethics that would also be worth discussing, including population control implicit in ‘living within limits’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Yves Pinder

John Yves Pinder recently finished his PhD at the University of Leeds. His thesis is titled A Theatrical Critique of Resilience in Culture. He is currently based in Hamburg.