Recording of the lecture given by the philosopher Joëlle Zask at La Bellone (Brussels) on 10 March 2025, organised by Cifas.

As part of the Que peut la Nuit laboratory run by Collectif Impatience, Joëlle Zask is in conversation with Giulietta Laki and Rafaella Houlstan-Hasaerts from Urban species, an action-research collective. Together they take a stroll through her various writings, taking as their starting point the re-edition of Outdoor Art. La sculpture et ses lieux (2013) under the title L'Art au grand air (2025) published by Éditions Premier Parallèle, an opportunity to explore the relationship between public space, participation and artistic practices.

In this conversation, the philosopher tells us about her relationship with art and her love of sculptural works in public space, while developing a critique of the ‘chamber’ conception of democracy and art. She also revisits the differences between 'public space’ and the ‘public place’, weaving in the writings of the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey. It is also an opportunity for her to explain her vision of participation in democracy and how this can be applied to art.

Joëlle Zask is one of the leading thinkers on public space in the French-speaking world. She is a French philosopher specialised in political philosophy and pragmatism. She is a lecturer at the University of Aix-Marseille and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She wrote her thesis on the philosopher John Dewey. She has translated his most important works, making them accessible in French.

She is one of the leading thinkers on participatory democracy, seeing participation as a combination of taking part, contributing a share and receiving a share. She approaches democracy in terms of a political culture and not just a type of government. The notion of self-government, whether individual or communal, is central to her thinking. In 2011, she published Participer. Essai sur les formes démocratiques de la participation. She also considers the political issues of contemporary artistic practices, particularly artistic practices in public space, with her work Art et démocratie : Les peuples de l'art (2003). She has recently turned her attention to issues relating to the ecological crisis, notably in her essay Quand la forêt brûle. Penser la nouvelle catastrophe écologique (2019), which analyses human responsibility in megafires, and Écologie et démocratie (2022), which closely links these two concepts.