Public Art today is not usually the product of a spontaneous artistic activity, nor of any one political and social issue being pursued by the artist/s concerned, instead it occurs within an institutional framework, is supported by a reliable grant policy and accompanied by an academic program of debate, documentation and mediation. Is the subversive element that once hallmarked critical public art now a thing of the past? What is the impact of the internationally successful jet-setting curator or artist in the provinces?
Perhaps today there are two dominant forms of critical practice to be ascertained in the public realm: activist art with socially motivated community projects or interventions (between Jeremy Deller and WochenKlausur) and an educational model, the »Schools« (Manifesta school, unitednationsplaza, Night School/Museum as Hub, institutions like Cubitt, Casco and BAK). These are two concrete models, both of which pursue an Enlightenment-based concept of aesthetic education in their approach to the public realm, to address a »today« and a collective »we«; in the case of the schools, with the use of academic forms of mediation (i.e. seminars, symposia, lectures and performances); in the case of activism with forms of intervention and amateurism – an art of action.