PCA Talks Presents: François Matarasso

Join us for a new PCA Talk on April 6, 2021 to meet with François Matarasso, a community artist, researcher and writer.

Join us for a new PCA Talk on April 6, 2021 to meet with François Matarasso, a community artist, researcher and writer.

How participation won and why it matters.

Participatory art, co-creation, social practice – the idea of creating art with non-professionals has become more common in recent years. But the meaning of the co-creative act, like its intention, remains ambiguous. Is it educational? Emancipatory? Or merely exploitative? And does it represent a lasting change in art’s social function, or is it just another passing movement?

François Matarasso has worked in this shifting territory for 40 years, as a community artist, researcher and writer.

In January 2019, he published A Restless Art, a book that took him four years to research, write and re-write, and forty years overall to develop the thinking that shaped it.

According to François Matarasso, “A Restless Art is about community and participatory art; it’s about what those practices are, how people think about them, why they’re done and what happens as a result. It’s called ‘a restless art’ because this work is unstable, changing and contested. It involves a range of ideas and practices. It crackles with artistic, political, ethical and philosophical tensions that give it life, energy and creativity. They make it matter in people’s lives.”

His work in community art stands on the belief that “everyone has the right to create art and to share the result, as well as to enjoy and participate what others do.”

His talk will explore the deep causes of the evolution of co-creative art, and suggest conceptual approaches to interpreting the increasingly normalized field of participatory art.

Visit his website to learn more about his work.

Join us on April 6, 2021 at 6:30 PM CET for an online talk by clicking the link below.