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 currentcrises of democracy and social imagination across Europe and the Western world, and the wayperformance relates to this crisis. Part I introduces the newly proposed neologism ‘public_ing’ as aterm 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 publicspace in ways distinct from the dominant neoliberal ones. Part II hosts the voices of people who tookpart in The Practice of Democracy/An Analogue Campaign, and of other art workers exploring therelation between arts, politics, and democracy.

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