This presentation explores the impact of artistic research when it takes the form of collective creation practices within community art (PRAC) and how this approach enables a deeper understanding of the territorial impact of PRAC. Through an interdisciplinary methodology combining collaborative workshops and ethnographic techniques—such as participant observation, field notes, and interviews—I examine the territorialization processes mobilized by PRAC in working-class neighborhoods in Santiago, Chile.
By investigating community art through practice, from my role as an artist-researcher, I experience and record the diverse agents involved and the mechanisms through which PRAC operates on an artistic, social, and spatial level. This approach reveals how productive frictions among PRAC participants and the distancing experiences from everyday life, fostered by art engagement, generate changes in how the territory, especially the neighborhood, is perceived and lived. Through regular activities like group conversation, collective mapping, and public mural intervention, participants reflect on, question, and reshape their relationship with their immediate social and spatial environment.
I will discuss how this practice-led research methodology in PRAC allows me to capture and analyze these practices' resonances within territories, from subtle transformations—such as shifts in the perception of shared spaces—to permanent physical interventions in the neighborhood. Finally, I will reflect on how practice-based research in the case of community art in Santiago, Chile, mobilizes new inside perspectives of its social and territorial effects, moving beyond idealizations or binary viewpoints.
Paula Salas
Universidad de Chile
Paula is an artist-researcher, mother, and teacher. She completed a Master’s in Artistic Research (University of Amsterdam) and previously studied Visual Arts (UC Chile). She is an Associate Professor at the School of Art of the UC Chile. As a visual artist, she focuses on contemporary and community art projects. Since 2012, she has been a member of the collective Agencia de Borde, producing research, exhibitions, and publications on territory and technology. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Territory, Space, and Society at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Chile.