Touching the City: Tactility and Affect of Public Art

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Abstract

Touching objects of public art is one of the most frequently recorded and at the same time superficially described practices of interaction with the urban environment. I propose to look at this practice through the lens of the “affective atmospheres” approach, which allows us to problematize tactile contact as a means and result of affective attunement with space. Analyzing the affective-discursive canon, emerging around the interaction with a new art object (the sculpture “Big Clay No. 4” in Moscow), I demonstrate how, on the one hand, the transition from digital to visual and tactile interaction with the materiality of space creates collective affect online; on the other hand, how this affect is transmitted to social media, making the public art object the center of a phygital hybrid space.

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About the authors

Daria A. Radchenko

Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration

Author for correspondence.
Email: darradchenko@gmail.com

Institute for Social Sciences

Russian Federation, 82 Vernadsky Avenue, Moscow, 119571

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