You Mean So Much to Me: The Role of the Audience in the Efficacy of Socially Engaged Art

Abstract

“You mean so much to me.” A term of endearment you might whisper to your lover, or a term of desperation as someone you love is leaving you. But in all honesty, you mean so much to me—and my work would not be the same without you. In this paper, I delineate what it means for art to be efficacious, discuss how art meaning is realized, and define the audience before diving into my two thesis works as case studies in how they each relate to the audience as forms of socially engaged art. I will then conclude with how the two works compare in their dependence of audience for their actualization of full meaning.