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Table 1 Art, politics and engagement

From: The future as aesthetic experience: imagination and engagement in future studies

Perspective

Engaging with futures

Criticism to considering art and engagement in this way

Art as autonomous domain, separated from politics, constituted by its own rules and values

Art as outreach strategy to engage the public in futures research

Reducing art to an instrument, denying its autonomy

Autonomous art as critical articulation of possible political positions and actions

Art as a source of alternative futures

Elitism: limiting art to museums and concert halls

Art as experience, radical democratisation

Art as experience transforms pasts and futures; beyond the disinterested bystander perspective.

Conceptualising art in this way is a radical redefinition