Mobilising affect for public art: Affective practices in voluntary organising

Abstract

Voluntary organising frequently relies on affective intensities to direct organisational efforts. However, how these intensities are cultivated across time and different contexts to engage and coordinate heterogeneous actors is not well understood. By applying a practice approach to affect, this paper proposes the concept of affective practices to theorise how affect is mobilised in materially driven (inter)actions to shape actions and relationalities around organisational goals. The analysis of ethnographic data from a long-term public art project reveals that four affective practices—enticing, envisioning, attending and asserting—are pivotal to sustaining the distributed process of voluntary organising. The sense of fascination, enthusiasm, care and discomfort that these affective practices mobilise instigates participation, support, acceptance and compliance from diverse partners, volunteers and the local public. Contributing to the affective turn in practice theory, the paper theorises how affective processes are cultivated as situative accomplishments in an ongoing and translocal organisational processes, highlighting the important role played by the vibrant presence of matter in affective practices. Additionally, the study expands our understanding of how an interplay of affective intensities engages and aligns diverse individuals and groups in voluntary organising by fostering coalitional moments in the organisational process.