[16] The diversity of approaches pose specific challenges for documenting social practice work, as the aesthetic of human interaction changes rapidly and involves many people simultaneously.
[7] Helping to inspire a period of urban renewal in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the 1980s and 1990s, a community of interdisciplinary artists known as the Brooklyn Immersionists practiced a form of creative social and environmental engagement using terms such as "aesthetic activism,"[17] "media rituals,"[17] "circuitive systems"[18] and "immersive mutual world construction.
"[19] Although a program of corporate welfare in the new millennium exploited the resulting revival of their district, the promise of an aesthetic that engages social practices was established.
[7] Some foundational characteristics of socially engaged art remain consistently relevant to a diverse range of works.
[2] The environment could be described on two primary levels: the broader community, city, or region; and the immediate space being occupied – a street, museum, studio, or other area.
To understand the context in which they are working, artists and producers must develop relationships with individuals, organizations, and institutions that intersect many different parts of their community and environment.
Aesthetics are typically hierarchical, highly subjective, and greatly determined by external influencers, such as the imagery of a given culture, or the relationship between appearance and market value.
[7] To escape these external influencers, aesthetics can also be defined in terms of “aesthesis,” an autonomous realm of experience and judgment that cannot be reduced to logic, reason or morality but is of great importance to humankind.
Longitudinal projects are those built upon regular and reoccurring social interactions and dialogue, organized with the intention to be sustained over a longer period.
Much social practice has taken place in the gap between the public and cultural institutions, which has been identified and acted upon as a new site for artistic intervention.
[37] However institutions, such as museums, foundations, non-profit organizations, and universities all play a significant role in supporting and amplifying social practice work.
[39] Social practice works are inextricable from formal arts institutions like museums or cultural funding agencies, which “recast alleviation of social and economic inequality as cultural production.”[22] In the traditional art world, market value and a work's collectability are deeply intertwined.
The expansion of the art world in the 21st century has seen the emergence of alternative supports, such as non-profit organizations and the ever-growing biennale network.
[42] Artists and producers have also formed their own means of support, as artist-run exhibition spaces, journals and blogs demonstrate.
Universities offer artists employment security, the support and validation often required for establishing grant-based and corporate partnerships, and access to a high interdisciplinary environment that not only accepts, but encourages, experimentation.
These individual artists and collectives create art objects, marketing materials, and performative event-based pieces that can exist in a gallery setting as well as in the public sphere.
By putting this work within the context of fictional products or alternative services, we are able to engage in a more enhanced conversation around topics ranging from globalization, immigration reform, and health care in a way that is whimsical and visually inspiring.
"[44] Social practice has received criticism for being "exploitative of the marginalized communities from which it so often draws..."[5] Social practice art can also serve as the public face of externally led economic activities in undervalued urban communities, concealing extractive relationships behind a facade of art.