Kester: I don\u2019t think that that the mainstream art world can really be changed at any deeper level: there is simply too much money at stake for the values that are propagated in that world to be really challenged. This doesn\u2019t mean that there hasn\u2019t been growing interest in various forms of socially engaged art practice over the last decade, although it\u2019s usually presented in the neutered context of \u201csocial\u201d art practice, since the concept of engagement or social change remains d\u00e9class\u00e9. At the same time, this has opened up access to institutional and discursive platforms that didn\u2019t exist for engaged art in the 1980s. So there is some room to manoeuvre on the margins, but I don\u2019t see any reason why the mainstream art world would ever offer unequivocal support for this work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"