Urgent Moments: Art and social change: The Letting Space projects 2010–2020
Editors:
Mark Amery, Amber Clausner and Sophie Jerram
Publisher:
Massey University Press
ISBN: 9781991016461
Date published:
12 October 2023
Pages:
352
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$65.00
After first occupying vacant spaces in post-stock-market-crash Auckland in the mid-1990s, public art curators Letting Space re-emerged in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. Confronted by the thin net of social welfare, the waste of the capitalist system and the climate emergency, it brokered spaces for artists to think and act radically, outside gallery walls.
This book chronicles the projects those artists drove. From a grocery store where everything was free to an ATM for depositing moods and a citizens’ water-testing lab, they added to the civic dialogue at a time when public space and media were increasingly commodified and under surveillance.
Written by leading New Zealand writers and thinkers, including Pip Adam and Chris Kraus, Urgent Moments demonstrates the vital role artists can play in the pressing discussions of our times.
About the editors:
Mark Amery is a writer, producer, curator and facilitator who works across the public arts and media with a focus on new forms of participation.
Amber Clauson is a British arts producer based in Te Whanganui-a-tara Wellington.
Sophie Jerram works with artists in community, government and academic roles.
