ABSTRACT
A number of theorists have argued that the critical potential of art and the figure of the artist have been neutralised and co-opted as culture becomes an expedient resource in the management of publics on a global scale. This chapter focuses on the spatial dimensions of socially engaged and participatory art as it is employed as an expedient and malleable resource in cities. It takes as an example Nine Urban Biotopes: Negotiating the Future of Urban Living, a socially engaged art project funded by the EU Culture Programme between 2013 and 2015 which delivered artistic research and cultural exchange in seven cities across South Africa and Europe. The chapter argues that these tensions are symptomatic of an uneasy fit between a tradition of arts participation, which has evolved out of radical practice, as part of a project of social justice and societal change and the instrumental uses of arts and cultural participation to address urban inequalities on a global scale.
