To Reveal, Remember and Expose - exploring Heritage and Social Change from an Art perspective

The general concept of communication for development is that it explores the use of communication – both as a tool and as a way of expressing processes of social change. Art can be regarded as a way of communication, and to use the arts in the field of communication for development is not new. Art as a force in social change has a long history. The purpose of this thesis is to take a closer look at the art project To Reveal, Remember and Expose and make an exploration of how or if an art project can facilitate new awareness, primarily around memories, heritage, identity and social change among project participants and city inhabitants encountered by the project. The objectives of this thesis are to investigate the following questions: What kind of awareness will the participants get out of the project? Can the project create a new awareness in terms of memory and heritage? How does the project connect and relate to culture, identity and city space? Communication theory, concepts of culture and representation, identity and space in the form of private and public space are presented. Performance art and theory, art intervention, sitespecific art and tactical media are elaborated upon. The primary methodology used is participatory observation, which has been applied on the planning, actions and discussions of the project. An interview with the artist behind the project and a structural content analysis of texts written by the students that participated in the art project will complement the participatory observation. The analysis of the project showed that the project could create awareness among its participants, especially about people, time and space. The actions also gave some insight and awareness concerning memories and heritage of some objects and places. The project connected and related to culture, identity and space in different ways. There were similarities to tactical media as it create situations were criticality could occur, but it was hard to see a whole picture of the outcome as it was not possible to know what the “audience” thought. All topics are relevant in communication and development and social change, but the thesis was not able to show that the project could give access to ways of expressing processes of social change. For further research it is of relevance to consider the magnitude of social change an art project can bring, and take into consideration that social change usually take time and is hard to find in a short period of time