Doing Politics with Citizen Art

Fawn Daphne Plessner is a professional artist and Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Canada. She holds a BA (Hons) Philosophy, Birkbeck College, University of London and a PhD in Art & Politics from Goldsmiths College, University of London, United Kingdom. She studied Fine Art at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Munich, Germany, under the artist Robin Page, an early member of the Fluxus movement. She has won numerous research grants and her art work has been exhibited in countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, USA and Canada. Since 2008, her work has focused on public art interventions under the banner of ‘citizen artist’.

Daphne Plessner helps us frame a spectrum of contemporary artistic practices, including her own, which shape civil space and ‘do politics’ in a new light. This is an engaged and passionate proposition for new models of citizenship that defy both the Westphalian models of the nation state and cosmopolitan imaginaries.

• Introduction 1 What Is Citizen Art? Its Meaning and Challenges 2 The Problem of Status and Cosmopolitan Citizenship and the Value of “Acts of Citizenship” for Understanding Citizen Art3 Art Interventions as Tools for Doing Politics and Shaping New Terrain 4 Enacting New Modes of Citizenship: Solidarities, Assemblies, and Public Thought Experiments 5 Altering the Facts on the Ground: Citizen Artist News: Clouded Title 6 Expanding Membership: Citizen Artist News: Kinship Conclusion