20 Jun, 2024

Ágora de Cá_What can Art do? | Facilitate, Pacify, Transform?

On June 20, 2024, at 6:30 p.m., the fourth session of the Ágora de Cá cycle, from the series “What can Art do?” took place at zet gallery, with the sub-theme “Facilitate, pacify, transform?”. The session was moderated by Professor Jean Martin Rabot, from the University of Minho, and featured the prestigious Canadian museologist Jean-Marie Lafortune, professor in the media and public communication department at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).

 

Synopsis

In the introduction to volume 10 of the Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais dedicated to the subject, we wrote that “artistic mediation includes a political or transformative dimension, which can be driven both by reproductive forces and by deconstructive, critical and dialogical movements (Mörsch, 2005; Rodrigo, 2012) and it is precisely in this tension that it must be understood and interrogated.” And we also stated that this was “Reason enough to reflect on the how or on the pedagogical arts of art mediation” (Pinto-Coelho, Pires, & La Fortune 2023, p. 8). In this fourth edition of the “What can art do?” cycle, we want to explore and discuss the pluralities of meaning and practices understood in the field of contemporary art mediation, with a particular interest in mediation as a place of symbolic, material and objective struggle. We ask: what can artistic mediation do? Facilitate, pacify, transform?

The project is organized by zet gallery in partnership with Passeio, with the support of dstgroup and the Centre for Communication and Society Studies (CECS) at the University of Minho.

 

 

Biographical notes

Jean-Marie Lafortune is a professor in the Department of Social and Public Communication at the University of Quebec in Montreal. He is a member of the Observatory of Cultural Mediations and the Education and Museums Research Group. He is editor of the journal Animation, Territoires et Pratiques Socioculturelles. Together with Anik Meunier and Jason Lukerhoff, he recently directed the book La Transmission Culturelle Dans les Musées de Societé (Cultural Transmission in the Museums of Society; La Documentation Française, 2022), and wrote the chapters “Mediation Culturelle” in the book edited by Camille Alloing, Evaluer la Communication des Organisations (Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2022, pp. 177-195), and “D’Autres Formes d’ Intervention Dans le Monde Anglo-Saxon: Le Modele Étatsunie”, in the book edited by Jean-Luc Richelle, Jean-Claude Gillet et l’utopie de l’animation. Action, formation, recherche (Carrières sociales édition, 2022, pp. 183-192).

ORCID: 0000-0002-7856-8312

Email: lafortune.jean-marie@uqam.ca

Address: Département de Communication Sociale et Publique, Pavillon Judith-Jasmin, Université du Québec à Montréal, 405 rue Sainte-Catherine Est, Montréal, Québec, H2L 2C4, Canada

 

Jean Martin Rabot received his PhD in Sociology, in the area of fundamental theories and methodologies, in 2005 from the University of Minho, where he is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Minho. He teaches sociological theories, the sociology of culture and the sociology of art, communication and the media. He has carried out research in the field of the sociology of everyday life and the imaginary, the sociology of post-modernity and the sociology of interactive media.