Public Art in Poland, Italy, and the Czech Republic

Online Workshop: Presentation of work-in-progress and discussion

Adam Andrzejewski and Marta Maliszewska (University of Warsaw)

Rural Public Art

The paper aims to analyze the role of public art in rural areas in Poland. Our research was initiated by the intuition that in inhabited rural areas that are lacking public institutions (i.e., where almost every space is privately owned) public art could play a significant role as a mean of prompting to create a public space in the proper sense. It is assumed that public art in inhabited rural areas affects space differently than public art in urban areas, where it primarily modifies already existing public space. We shall further investigate what kind of public is a proper recipient of a particular work of public art. The following hypothesis is formulated: Some public artworks are designed to be perceived by more than one audience.

Andrea Borghini and Nicola Piras (University of Milan)

Eating Local as Public Art?

In a recent paper, Borghini & Baldini (2021) defended the thesis that dining and cooking can be considered as a form of a public art. In this paper, we develop Borghini and Baldini’s discussion by considering whether specific kind of dining and cooking—local cuisine—can be considered as a form of a public art. In order to ascertain this, we have to first rehearse extant definitions of local cuisine and then return to the main question at stake which we assess in specific case studies for local food as memorial art, as social protest art, and art that enhances oneself. Finally, we stress the two contributions that local food can offer to public art.

Tereza Hadravová and Sabrina Muchová (Charles University in Prague)

Speed up or Slow down. On Temporality of Public Art

In this article, we want to draw attention to temporal aspects of (some) public artworks. We think that the relation between the aspects of time in works and places as well as activities and practices, which are usually classified as public art, do explain why transfers between spaces are, sometimes, possible. Moreover, we suggest that by paying attention to mutual relations of temporal features of works and places, where they are displayed, we might better understand when public art is found valuable and when it seems to fail. And finally, the mutual temporal relations between works of art and the places also help to illuminate that places themselves are to be described and understood as much in spatial terms as temporal ones.