Notes On Participatory Art

We are living in the Age of Participation. Social media are exploding, customer cooperation is sought in product development, and customer content is even built into media. But where is the art reflecting our times? Where are the artists making this kind of art? Who were their predecessors? In this book the author traces the roots of Participatory Art from Duchamp, Mondrian and Moholy-Nagy via less well known artists like Lygia Clark and Charlotte Posenenske as well as via better known artists like Joseph Beuys and yvind Fahlstrm to contemporary artists showing an interest in participation like Olafur Eliasson and Antony Gormley. Participation is the most important thing that has happened in art Gormley said in 2009. What, then, is Participatory Art? After around 40 years of practice the author tries to distill the essential principles in 10 suggestions for a Manifesto. Most central is its focus on the unfolding creative moment itself and on the creativity of the spectator.

Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take part an artist can promote new emancipatory social relations. Around the world, the champions of this form of expression are numerous, ranging from art historians such as Grant Kester, curators such as Nicolas Bourriaud and Nato Thompson, to performance theorists such as Shannon Jackson. Artificial Hells is the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art, known in the US as "social practice." Claire Bishop follows the trajectory of twentieth-century art and examines key moments in the development of a participatory aesthetic. This itinerary takes in Futurism and Dada; the Situationist International; Happenings in Eastern Europe, Argentina and Paris; the 1970s Community Arts Movement; and the Artists Placement Group. It concludes with a discussion of long-term educational projects by contemporary artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tania Bruguera, Pawe? Althamer and Paul Chan. Since her controversial essay in Artforum in 2006, Claire Bishop has been one of the few to challenge the political and aesthetic ambitions of participatory art. In Artificial Hells, she not only scrutinizes the emancipatory claims made for these projects, but also provides an alternative to the ethical (rather than artistic) criteria invited by such artworks. Artificial Hells calls for a less prescriptive approach to art and politics, and for more compelling, troubling and bolder forms of participatory art and criticism.

Participatory art practices allow members of an audience to actively contribute to the creation of art. Annemarie Kok provides a detailed analysis and explanation of the use of participatory strategies in art in the so-called ›long sixties‹ (starting around 1958 and ending around 1974) in Western Europe. Drawing on extensive archival materials and with the help of the toolbox of the actor-network theory, she maps out the various actors of three case studies of participatory projects by John Dugger and David Medalla, Piotr Kowalski, and telewissen, all of which were part of documenta 5 (Kassel, 1972).

The 1980s was a critical decade in shaping today’s art production. While newly visible work concerned with power and identity hinted at a shift toward multiculturalism, the ‘80s were also a time of social conservatism that resulted in substantial changes in arts funding. In Asking the Audience, Adair Rounthwaite uses this context to analyze the rising popularity of audience participation in American art during this important decade. Rounthwaite explores two seminal and interrelated art projects sponsored by the Dia Art Foundation in New York: Group Material’s Democracy and Martha Rosler’s If You Lived Here…. These projects married issues of social activism—such as homelessness and the AIDS crisis—with various forms of public participation, setting the precedent for the high-profile participatory practices currently dominating global contemporary art. Rounthwaite draws on diverse archival images, audio recordings, and more than thirty new interviews to analyze the live affective dynamics to which the projects gave rise. Seeking to foreground the audience experience in understanding the social context of participatory art, she argues that affect is key to the audience’s ability to exercise agency within the participatory artwork. From artists and audiences to institutions, funders, and critics, Asking the Audience traces the networks that participatory art creates between various agents, demonstrating how, since the 1980s, leftist political engagement has become a cornerstone of the institutionalized consumption of contemporary art.

'Living as Form' grew out of a major exhibition at Creative Time in New York City. Like the exhibition, the book is a landmark survey of more than 100 projects selected by a 30-person curatorial advisory team; each project is documented by a selection of colour images.

This searing critique of participatory art—from its development to its political ambitions—is “an essential title for contemporary art history scholars and students as well as anyone who has . . . thought, ‘Now that’s art!’ or ‘That’s art?’” (Library Journal) Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take part an artist can promote new emancipatory social relations. Around the world, the champions of this form of expression are numerous, ranging from art historians such as Grant Kester, curators such as Nicolas Bourriaud and Nato Thompson, to performance theorists such as Shannon Jackson. Artificial Hells is the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art, known in the US as “social practice.” Claire Bishop follows the trajectory of twentieth-century art and examines key moments in the development of a participatory aesthetic. This itinerary takes in Futurism and Dada; the Situationist International; Happenings in Eastern Europe, Argentina and Paris; the 1970s Community Arts Movement; and the Artists Placement Group. It concludes with a discussion of long-term educational projects by contemporary artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tania Bruguera, Pawel Althamer and Paul Chan. Since her controversial essay in Artforum in 2006, Claire Bishop has been one of the few to challenge the political and aesthetic ambitions of participatory art. In Artificial Hells, she not only scrutinizes the emancipatory claims made for these projects, but also provides an alternative to the ethical (rather than artistic) criteria invited by such artworks. Artificial Hells calls for a less prescriptive approach to art and politics, and for more compelling, troubling, and bolder forms of participatory art and criticism.

The study critically reclaims participatory art beyond its co-option as a fuzzword of neoliberal governance. It examines a range of artistic practices from community theatre, immersive performance and the visual arts in different sites around the world. It offers a refreshing theorisation of participatory art as gesture.

Going Public responds to the urgent need to expand current thinking on what it means to co-create and to actively involve the public in research activities. Drawing on conversations with over thirty practitioners across multiple cultures and disciplines, this book examines the ways in which oral historians, media producers, and theatre artists use art, stories, and participatory practices to engage creatively with their publics. It offers insights into concerns related to voice, appropriation, privilege, and the ethics of participation, and it reveals that the shift towards participatory research and creative practices requires a commitment to asking tough questions about oneself and the ways that people’s stories are used.