In a context of increased urban competition, art and culture are often used by cities worldwide as tools to improve their image and make urban spaces attractive. In that process, art isas we will arguebecoming a new urban norm, which is normalizing not only urban space and experience, but also art itself. By contributing to the pacification or securization of public spaces, art could encourage some behaviors or, on the contrary, discourage others. Reversely, this normative dimension of urban art could impact art itself, especially by redefining the limit between artistic forms that are either inclusive or exclusive, dominant or subversive. Through examples found during PhD fieldwork in Montreal and Johannesburg, we will demonstrate that this normalization of the city through art and of art through the city takes place in various urban contexts, that it questions the distinction between Northern and Southern cities, and the definition of a (global) city itself.

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À partir d'expériences de terrain menées à Johannesburg (Afrique du Sud) depuis 2009, je me propose de réfléchir à la place des émotions, et notamment de la peur \textendash émotion particulièrement prégnante dans le cas johannesburgeois \textendash, dans les savoir-faire et les savoirs géographiques. Domaine encore relativement peu exploré en géographie française, je m'interrogerai sur les causes de ce manque de considération en envisageant les résistances et réticences des géographes français quant à l'étude de la peur en particulier, et des émotions en général. Je proposerai ensuite quelques pistes, notamment méthodologiques, en vue d'une meilleure prise en compte de ces questions en géographie

Since the end of apartheid (1994), public art—broadly defined as art in public spaces (Miles )—has been increasingly present and visible in the South African urban landscape. But South African public art, and particularly the dominant one sponsored by public entities or private companies, mainly consists in one type of art that is permanent, installed in big cities, produced within top‐down strategies, and destined for an abstract public. In reaction to that trend, some artists are attempting to critically and radically redefine public art in South African cities today, especially by looking at the role of the different publics in the art‐making process. In their desire to include the various publics in the making of art, one can wonder about the capacity of these artists to promote a new form of public art that could be a tool to amend the urban context by (re)integrating all the publics that compose South Africa today in the production of the post‐apartheid city. To address this concern, I will focus in particular on the Made in Musina project. Initiated by two artists in a small town close to the South African/Zimbabwean border, this project is emblematic of an attempt to invent an alternative way of making public art with its publics (in that case, local artists), starting from their desires, even at the risk of having the initial project “hijacked.” Based on observations in situ and in‐depth interviews, I will consider the different phases of this project in order to grasp the opportunities and the challenges of such public art. I will argue that this South African “new genre public art” (Lacy ) is changing not only art itself but also the way South African cities—and small towns like Musina—imagine themselves through art and artists.

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