Social practice

Social Practice Art refers to art whose primary material is a person-to-person exchange, interaction, or participation, instead of traditional materials like wood, steel, and paint.
What is Social Practice?
Social practice creates social situations that are critically understood as art through the use of various strategies including "urban interventions, utopian proposals, guerrilla architecture, 'new genre' public art, social sculpture, project-based community practice, interactive media, service dispersals, and street performance." These situations, organizations, and events, can involve various media including but not limited to photography, video, drawing, text, sound, sculpture, and performance art.
Within the art making process, the practice emphasizes people in relationships to each other and their surroundings, "focusing on engagement and accountability between the audience and the artist". Distinct from modern art of the 20th century, social practice builds on a variety of contemporary art movements, including public art, Institutional Critique, interactive art, performance art, and environmental art. It is distinct from academic art or the high arts movements in that it does not require any association with formal art theory or training. Breaking away from the conventions of any particular structured aesthetic theory, social practice maintains the intention of creativity while incorporating elements of sociology, anthropology, social work, environmentalism, journalism, and community outreach.
MFA
The first graduate program to start a Social practice graduate program in the US is the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Portland State University now has a Social practice MFA program.
What We Want is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art
What We Want is Free, is a book about Social practice published in 2005 by Ted Purves. The book includes essays by curators Bill Arning, Kate Fowle and Lars Bang Larsen, Mary Jane Jacob and artists Ben Kinmont, Jörgen Svensson, Guy Overfelt, Jeanne van Heeswijk, and an interview with Cesare Pietroiusi by Shane Aslan Selzer. It also includes a Projects Histories section with short descriptions of dozens of related projects. Ted Purves is the chair of the fine arts department for the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, California.
Artists
Andrea Zittel, Theaster Gates, Candy Chang, Ted Purves, Steve Lambert, The Yes Men, Marjetica Potre, Jason Eppink, Cesare Pietroiusi, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
Open Engagement
Open Engagement is a yearly conference in Portland, Oregon founded by Jen Delos Reyes with Portland State University's Social practice MFA program. Open engagement aims to help educate and explore the practices and ideas surrounding art and social practice today.

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