Asociación de Arte Útil

How can we come together and use art as a tool for societal change?

“Arte Útil” is Spanish and can be translated literally as “useful art,” but it also refers to the concept of “art as a tool.” This concept is linked to the idea that art should question established systems and point out new possibilities for societal action. “Arte Útil” utilizes artistic thinking to create, develop, and implement tactics which enable us to reimagine and reshape the way we act in society. 

Based on an initiative of Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, the Asociación de Arte Útil was founded in 2013 – a continuously growing network of committed individuals and cultural institutions promoting the development of “Arte Útil” around the world. Its growing archive documents some 300 case studies of local initiatives from all over the globe that respond to urgent problems with concrete solutions. This extensive collection of projects shows that they are not just isolated actions, but part of a greater historic and artistic movement which has a direct influence on our present.

The projects highlighted in this presentation are a selection of examples from that archive. Each project is linked to the exhibition »Fellow Travellers« to the ZKM, and to the city of Karlsruhe. The entire archive as well as additional information can be found online on the website of the Asociación de Arte Útil.

Arte Útil projects should:

• Propose new uses for art within society
• Use artistic thinking to challenge the field within which it operates 
• Respond to current urgencies 
• Operate on a 1:1 scale 
• Replace authors with initiators and spectators with users
• Have practical, beneficial outcomes for its users
• Pursue sustainability 
• Re-establish aesthetics as a system of transformation 

These criteria were developed by Tania Bruguera together with curators of the Queens Museum (New York, USA), the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, NL), and Grizedale Arts (Coniston, UK) in order to define Arte Útil and create a framework for projects.

Initiator: Tania Bruguera
Directors oft he Asociación de Arte Útil: Tania Bruguera and Alistair Hudson
Archive researchers and coordinators: Gemma Medina Estupiñan and Alessandra Saviotti