Reading Assignment 4: Returning on Bikes Notes on Social Practice

Social practice has been introduced to the art world and become a method to be applied by Activism and Situationist. According to the author Maria Lind, the central value of social practice is all about participation. It promotes interaction between the audience and artwork.

Returnity was a social practice project created by Elin Wikstroms and one of the works was Cycle Club. It was about a large group of people riding bikes but cycling backward in a town in Germany in 1997. Cycle Club pushed the concept of social practice toward people and contemporary art. Although sometimes Returnity was still considered as a normal art project which was only about the connection with audience, it had shown in many cities around the world when social practice started to be recognized.

Many social practices reflect the issue at certain moments. During the post-WWII period, there were already several artists practiced with the weakening economy problem. Currently, the issues are related to working environment for artists. Many artists often suffer from ambiguous rights or working with low paid. Services, a project initiated in 1993, responded to this situation. Generally, it proceeded by cooperating with various artists in exhibitions. But Lind did not provide more details about this project in the article.

As our society is so globalized now, I think social practice can be more effective. We are facing the problem of over-relying on touch-screen devices. Because social practice strongly involves physical participation, it may be a helpful method to let more people to pay attention on this kind of problem.