Book Launch: PUBLIC_ING - Danae Theodoridou

The book draws on the performance project The Practice of Democracy/An Analogue Campaign,which ran from 2019-2021 in different European cities. Written in two parts, it discusses the current crises of democracy and social imagination across Europe and the Western world, and the way performance relates to this crisis. Part I introduces the newly proposed neologism ‘public_ing’ as a term and practice inflecting a new understanding of the relation of art to politics, marking a shift from ‘relational aesthetics’ and ‘participatory art’ to speculative artistic processes that construct public space in ways distinct from the dominant neoliberal ones. Part II hosts the voices of people who took part in The Practice of Democracy/An Analogue Campaign, and of other art workers exploring the relation between arts, politics, and democracy.

For this launch, Danae Theodoridou invites three guests to react to the book and the project that led to it from their different perspectives. Sociologist Rudi Laermans will offer his critical response to the book, and the term and practice of ‘publicing’. Project participants Marc Godts and Charlotte Couturier will talk about their personal experience from taking part in An Analogue Campaign. These responses will start a dialogue with the author, the invited guests and the audience. The evening will be moderated by Simon Baetens.