The working group investigates the reciprocity of the arts and public spheres. To what extent do the arts constitute or test new, alternative, and oppositional public spheres? What are the material, spatial and temporal registers of artistic infiltrations into the public? In this regard, the group aims at a conceptual and theoretical exploration of the term and to connect the antagonistic “counter” to more fluid relations and terms such as “sub,” “adjacent,” “partial” or “alternative public spheres.” These theoretical investigations develop in close interrelation with the concrete case studies of the respective research projects. Among other questions, we will examine how (counter)public spheres are socially, spatially, praxeologically, discursively, or medially created and what dynamics of hegemony and marginality compose and shape (counter)public spheres.

The contact persons for this working group are Henning Podulski (C01) and Mimmi Woisnitza (A06).