what is art?

I know this might not be the best video to raise the above question with but I thought as a student of the arts, when I first watched this, it made me wonder and at the same time realized the fragility that is inherent in our idea(s) of art. When you see works like these, installations, you wonder whether these works will ever see the world outside the gallery as they are. Then you also wonder whether the fact that the gallery as an empty hostile space ever play a role in the artist's mind or not as he or she prepares. I have a very narrow and demanding understanding of what art is and should be. That it should be integral to the social. It shouldn't just be something limited to a certain dimension in its functionality. To me, art that speaks about the significance of certain materials and medium to a certain historical narrative should have the ability to speak not just within the gallery but also outside it. To a large extent, it seems to me that art is appreciated and made in a circle of exchange made largely within an exclusionary cypher...