Research Abstract

Revisiting Life World: gaining affective and environmental engagement through socially engaged art

This creative practice-led research project, ‘Revisiting Life World: gaining affective and environmental engagement through socially engaged art’, will employ socially engaged art as a method to reconnect the community and explore affective engagement between the public and the environment. The term of Life World is from Husserl's phenomenological concept, which is like a collective inter-subjective pool of perceiving, emphasizing a state of affairs in which the world is experienced and lived (Husserl,1936). In other words, the lifeworld can seem like the horizon of all our experiences. It is dynamic and changeable because shaped by our perception. The research raises the question 'What role can socially engaged art play in local environmental engagement?' and how to rebuild connections for the public in the post-COVID-19 period by encouraging people to perceive and reconsider their relationship to participation in and care of the environment. The research investigates the relationship between the concepts of participation, affect and sense of place. With theoretical frameworks of affect theory, socially engaged art, and place and space, my research practice will explore multi-layered participations, artistic ways for gaining affective connections, and different sites for social engagement, including in-person and online.

Bio

Ye (Sherry) Liu is a current PhD candidate in the School of Art, RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Sherry's artistic practice connects issues of the environment with social engagement to explore how creative practice illuminates the value of communities and creates environmental engagement with the public. Her works focus on affect, Socially engaged art, community regeneration, exploring the relational aesthetics and connective aesthetics to challenge the public to reconsider our community and environment.

liuye902@gmail.com
sherryyeliu.com
@sherryyeliu (instagram)