Towards mediation artistic practices in social contexts

Abstract

This article presents the advances of the first phase of a research named Artistic practices of mediation with communities: challenges to expand the social role of the arts in Chile, funded by the National Agency for Research and Development, which investigates the expanded artistic practices of mediation (PAMEX) developed in Chile, to demonstrate their contributions to the artistic and social field. Through a qualitative methodology focused on the study of cases of Chilean artists and art collectives, different artistic practices of mediation developed with communities are analyzed, recognizing them as a contemporary phenomenon of the arts that expands to dialogue with the social, political and territorial in Chile. It analyzes four collaborative artistic projects carried out in different regions of the country and demonstrates the extent to which the arts are a tool and contribution to addressing socio-cultural problems. Also, eight characteristics of artistic practices are identified that allow to propose the concept of PAMEX as intra-actions that are experiential, processual, flexible, reflective, collaborative and with a sense rather put in the need of the community, than in artistic production with authorship. The results exemplify the intra-action of these characteristics in four projects analyzed.