Of course this is a provocation: after centuries of struggling for the autonomy of art, after decades of learning that the essential quality of art is its ambiguity, after years of repeating that art raises questions and does not provide answers – suddenly this persistent call for art that is useful, for direct involvement, for artistic activism, for intervention in the political reality of our societies and economies. Cuban artist Tania Bruguera calls this kind of practice Arte Útil.
Here, taking a variety of examples, curator Florian Malzacher explains what “useful art” can be: art that undertakes not only to describe social and political evils, but to intervene actively, with the aim of changing the world, at least on a small scale.
Florian Malzacher, born in Bonn (DE) in 1970, lives and works in Berlin. He is an independent curator, dramaturg, writer, and artistic director of the Impuls Theater Festival in Cologne, Du?sseldorf and Mu?hlheim/Ruhr (DE). From 2006 until 2012 he was jointly responsible for the programme of the steirischer herbst in Graz (AT).
