The Visible Award is the first international production award devoted to art work in the social sphere, that aims to produce and sustain socially engaged artistic practices in a global context.
The Visible Award, part of the broader research project, aims to research, support and offer a discursive and productive platform to innovative artistic projects that are able to become visible also in fields other than the artistic ones. Artworks that are actively engaging within the social sphere, understanding art as a tool to make visible other fields and issues within the traditional art system and thus sharing an awareness about artistic production as an active element and agency in contemporary society, and with critical and future-oriented aspirations.
The Visible Award is looking for artistic projects that, in a radical and proactive way, are able to rethink our cities in their approach to urban and rural communities, put into question education models while reconsidering different ways of sharing knowledge, support alternative models of economic development and new ideas for the allocation of resources, rethink the access to information or the priority of ecological and environmental needs, as well as experimenting with participatory and democratic political models while starting these open-ended projects. These are just a few examples of how artistic processes can create areas for reflection and mobilization, acting as a field for action within the public domain, in favor of a reading of participation in art that considers the social body as a potential power for bringing about responsible change and social transformation.
The Visible Award not only takes up the discussions about the development of art in a responsible relationship with the complexities of social change, but it also offers artists real opportunities to produce, and thus the possibility to experiment and work on new visions that can have a significant impact on the shared imaginary and on reality itself. The award intends to break away from the conventions governing the production of public art in the form of monumental objects, in order to focus on a new form of commitment in art, and on the relationships between the production of art, science, and culture. In order to achieve this, it is essential to create new spaces and processes, rather than producing self-contained objects, and finding potential new areas for interaction, in which spectators can be considered as proactive subjects.
The Visible Award thus wishes to bring out those artistic processes that manage to expand their practices from the ordinary spaces for art and enter directly into the public realm in its various representations.
The 2017 event, which is free and open to the public, will convene a Temporary Parliament that will engage new audiences with nine art projects shortlisted for this year’s award. Members of the public and assembled experts and guests from many fields will gather to experience presentations, discussion, and debate, followed by an open vote that will determine the winner of the 2017 Visible Award. The day will be introduced by artist and Artistic Director of Cittadellarte, Michelangelo Pistoletto who will give an inaugural speech. This year, the Award will be chaired by Laura Raicovich, Director of the Queens Museum, who will host the debate together with Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander, co-directors of the Visible project, and Elvira Dyangani Ose, Senior Curator at Creative Time, who will be the advocate for all of the projects. Videos of the nine shortlisted projects are available for public review in advance of the Temporary Parliament on Visible’s website.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/23196