ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the perspectives on critical artistic practices that encourage the 'worlding' of the concept of the 'artscape'. It also explores a flexible concept like the artscape to accommodate the impossibility of a coherent set of reference points, histories or modes of evaluating what exactly constitutes art, or critical art, or in whose terms these various works can be interpreted. The book comprises artistic practices connected to transformative processes that deal specifically with funding and policy. It aims to compare the role of aesthetics in the Sunflower Movement in Taipei and the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. The book presents an artists' coalition in Berlin that effectively lobbied for public funding to go towards independent art spaces. It deals more directly with questions of representation and participation, particularly in engaging with a broader idea of the art public.
