In the context of the exhibition “The Entangled” organized by ULUS, the largest and the oldest association of artist in Serbia, “Relational athletics: adaptation maintenance diagram, > 2020”. by Jeff Kasper, translated into Serbian and printed in Cyrillic, has helped us organize challenging contradictions between the conservative and the progressive forces, between fine arts and visual arts. It has also helped us navigate our subjectivities in a repressive and violent on-going drama that has emerged from persecution, ostracization and targeting of anybody who could represent a difference and change in the society by the means of contemporary art.
Let’s hear if Jeff Kasper’s socially engaged art practice could inspire us to collectively begin the process of healing?
Jeff Kasper is an artist and educator who works in between design, media, and public pedagogy to facilitate participatory experiences, creative curricula, and conceptual social spaces, that center support and wellbeing. His current research explores how trauma-informed education and nonviolence impact the design process, arts collaborations, and learning.
Kasper’s various arts-based projects engage with methods from peer-to-peer education and topics from environmental psychology.
Over the years, he has been dedicated to building cultures of support as an artist working in arts management, community health, and social planning. He has presented his work in the United States and internationally. Kasper has received awards and residencies from CUE Art Foundation, Downtown Art, Art Beyond Sight, Social Practice Queens, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, and served as a mentor for the NYFA Immigrant Artist Program in Social Practice.
Civic Art Lab, the perennial platform he co-founded with Laura Scherling, was awarded an Urban Urge SEED Grant in 2015 and was recently featured in Futures Worth Preserving: Cultural Constructions of Nostalgia and Sustainability (Transcript Press). Since its inception, the project has gathered hundreds of participants through nearly 200 free public workshops merging environmental education with art and design.
His various contributions to socially engaged art can be found in the books: Art As Social Action: The Principles and Practices of Teaching Social Practice Art (Skyhorse Press) and Bridging Communities Through Socially Engaged Art (Routledge). He is the co-editor of More Art In The Public Eye available with Duke University Press.
Jeff Kasper, Relaciona atletika: dijagram održavanja adaptacije, 2020.
