Conversations in a circle: high-tech art in the service of social design

Abstract

We are currently witnessing a progressive interest on the part of citizens to become involved in social design, as a result of the manifest servitude of public power to the requirements of the market. Conversations in a Circle materialises a sophisticated artistic technology that makes their intervention possible. This article gathers the experience lived during the implementation of that artistic process in different educational and socio-cultural environments, as an extraordinary and direct way of acting in political life. Through dialogue and drawing, the participants form a micro-community, aware of their capacity to address and take charge of issues that concern them in their daily lives, which they no longer find convenient to entrust to other public or private bodies. The members of these circular meetings ask themselves about the possibility of a free society. To this end, they rethink key everyday concepts such as democracy, creativity and work, among others. By observing and reshaping them, they cease to be abstract and show their meaning in the life of each participant. The group projects the outline of a new social form.