Paper short abstract:

This presentation aims to explore the postulate of a social performativity of art and the role of aesthetic phenomena (wall painting, performative project of public art) in the production of social relations.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation explores the idea of a social performativity of art, that we developed in the context of an investigation on a phenomenon of wall paintings in Sardinia (Cozzolino, 2017) : how can the way artists work generate elements that can bring out new forms of sociability?

We will use data from a recent ethnographic inquiry in Mexico to study artistic projects that, through their public and political dimensions, involve complex lines of cooperation between various actors in civil society and that develop critical reflections on the future of Mexican society.

This is the case of the installation entitled Hasta el último aliento ("Until the last breath") made by Betsabeé Romero and produced in October 2017 in front of the Palais des Beaux-Arts in memory of the victims of the earthquake that had affected Mexico on September 19th. Caesar Cortes Vega, artist and poet, started from this same event and the subjective ways to face it, to create his own plastic archive of the disaster.

The collective of graphic designers, the "Buena Estrella", is engaged in the realization of "mapa del ricuerdos" with the intention of putting in relation the individual and collective memories of the inhabitants of deprived areas of Mexico.

These projects, involving different forms of "doing together", situations of exchange and confrontations of individuals in their experience, yield concrete elements that can help us reflect on the active role of aesthetic phenomena in the production of social relations.