An artist-geographer’s lens

In this afterword – being, as it is, an ‘after’ word – I do not want to intervene directly in the themes of the collection in the way they have been structured by Martin, Joni and the contributors. I think this ground is already well covered in the preceding pages. The sub-titled concepts of art, space and identity undergird the chapters, and the organising framework cogently captures and conveys the themes of power, affect and super-diversity as they map onto and manifest the entwining of art, space and identity. The contributors themselves examine a range of places, media, communities, subjectivities and politics that are constituted, explored or eployed by public art, and questions of audience, participation, application and evaluation are interrogated. Using my positioning as an ‘artist-geographer’ to respond to this comprehensive range of issues, I want to pick up on three ‘alternative’ themes that are introduced more or less tangentially in the collection but that I think will deserve fuller attention in future scholarship on the geographies of public art (indeed, all art practice). These themes might be briefly denoted as mobile digital public art, rural public art and multiscalar public art.