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 at analyzing the role of public art in rural areas in Poland. Our investigation is initiated by the intuition that in inhabited rural areas that are lacking public institutions (that is, where almost every space is privately owned) public art could play a significant role as a means of prompting to create public space in a proper sense. It is suggested 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 public.

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 forms of public art. In this paper we develop Borghini and Baldini’s discussion, by considering whether specific kinds of dining and cooking—eating local—can be considered as a form of public art. In order to do so, we first rehearse extant definitions on eating local, to then return to the main question at stake, which we assess in terms of specific case studies for local food as memorial art, as social protest art, and art that enhances. Finally, we conclude by stressing 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 relation between time aspects of works and places as well as activities and practices 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 they are displayed at, we may better understand when public art is found valuable and when it seems to fail. And finally, the mutual temporal relations of 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