Critical introduction: The Turn to Community in the Arts

This Critical Introduction to our Special Edition on ‘The Turn to Community in the Arts’ surveys the diverse ways in which ‘the turn’ is manifesting across art forms. Multiple forces are contributing to the shift in art-making. These include artists’ attempts to bridge relationships between aesthetic and activist practices; a dissolution in the boundaries between cultural, social, political and economic domains; and the increasing instrumentalization of the arts by government. Crucially, the authors map out the various mobilizations of community within distinct disciplines and traditions of arts practice, and consider how the ‘turn’ is understood within discourses of art criticism, contemporary art theory and community art. The disjunctures between and within these domains precipitate the critical questions and problems driving the subsequent articles of the Special Edition.