Action Art in City

Abstract

The article gives a summary on critical theoretical and art practices dealing with urban space. From the birth of discourse in late XIX and the figure of flaneur in the texts of Bodler and Benjamin through mass protests of 1960s until our days’ cartography of “Realityv,” activism and movements for creating the spaces of alternative experience in post-city. Urban meta- narrative was formed by theories of W. Benjamin, A. Lefebre and Michele de Certeau. Numerous art movements of 60-s, for example situationists and provo, abandoned the representation of space and began to “produce” space in different urban practices such as derive and psychogeography. Then, in 1970-s and 1980-s, the relationships between art and city have become more flexible. Various art practices have been used in urban studies. Swiss researcher Lucius Burkhardt invented Strollology or Promenadology — special field of studies between art, urban studies and sociology. Numerous interdisciplinary studies and continuous “proletarisation” of art has led to very little distinction between everyday urban practices, art and activism. Urban meta- narrative, still influential, does not fully describe the situation. Modern scholars try to reimagine the urban. Contemporary city, post-city is a a place of total multiplicity, equivalent descriptions and alternative ontologies. Contemporary art and activist groups act as ontological sculptors of urban body, trying to create new modes of existence and imagination of urban space. Keywords: flaneur; perfoming arts; activist art; process