Nineteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Joy is an explicit and implicit aspect in the making/dispersal of temporal artworks and exchange-events. Responding to a global urgency to engage in reciprocity (manaakitanga) and be responsible to and care for ‘our relations’ (whakawhanaungatanga), we discuss how joy can manifest within the public-everyday through the slightest of presences. Finding joy in everyday occurrences is a necessity of life—and core to our survival as feeling humans. We believe there is an increasing need for artworks that provide sustenance in ways not necessarily always visible within the usual structures: exhibitions, biennales, festivals. As artists, when we release a durational artwork into the world, we hope it will bring attention to joyous yet urgent moments. The social exchange in art takes many forms. It offers an opportunity to pause, openly embrace sensory responses (“Rise to your senses”), and consider a work’s reception as a modality of appreciation and enjoyment. Exchange-events encourage a personal-political to transition into a social-political space through assembling like-minded people, where action and gesture invite deeper participation. We reflect on the impacts of practising over time and within duration, slowing down to appreciate and enjoy an exchange, and how this interaction can co-create a sense of community. We will ask: how might the event-nature of an artistic project produce resonance, appreciation and joy? By sharing social practice projects that utilise reciprocity as a condition of its unfolding for a public, we explore how presences, resonances, joy provide the basis for affective support structures to nurture collective appreciation.