Simposium Being in Public

Symposium: Being In Public – Encounters | Outside Place / Inner Space | 3. – 8.4.2017 | Belfast, N-Ireland

The Symposium will investigate the interconnected role of the performative collective/action and the citizen in the making and changing nature of public space/s and thereby changing and transforming individual citizens themselves.

The Symposium starts on the basis of an openness about public space as a social and political realm essential to democratic life and as a place of physical design. It is informed by the political and moral philosophy of Hannah Arendt, and her position that this realm is where citizens negotiate, mediate and take collective action for the common good. Modernity she contends, has manufactured “distracted citizens” alienated from the public and the ‘common world’. It is this social and political terrain that initiates the open ground and framework for the Symposium

It proposes to examine the potential of contemporary performative art practice in the public realm as an activating ‘temporary community’ which by expanding the field of performative practice can interrogate public being and space in the wake of modernity’s psychological and economic ‘effect.

For the facilitation of the symposium we are using Open Space Technology which is a methodological tool that enables self-organizing groups of all sizes to deal with hugely complex issues in a very short period of time.

Lunch Provided: Please inform us of any dietary or special requirements. Email: bbeyond@europe.com

Symposium: Being In Public – Encounters | Outside Place / Inner Space | 3. – 8.4.2017 | Belfast, N-Ireland

​