Pioneering Participatory Art Practices

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 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.

This Handbook offers a multiform sweep of theoretical, historical, practical and personal glimpses into a landscape roughly characterised as contemporary Irish theatre and performance. Bringing together a spectrum of voices and sensibilities in each of its four sections — Histories, Close-ups, Interfaces, and Reflections — it casts its gaze back across the past sixty years or so to recall, analyse, and assess the recent legacy of theatre and performance on this island. While offering information, overviews and reflections of current thought across its chapters, this book will serve most handily as food for thought and a springboard for curiosity. Offering something different in its mix of themes and perspectives, so that previously unexamined surfaces might come to light individually and in conjunction with other essays, it is a wide-ranging and indispensable resource in Irish theatre studies.

This edited volume analyzes participatory practices in art and cultural heritage in order to determine what can be learned through and from collaboration across disciplinary borders. Following recent developments in museology, museum policies and practices have tended to prioritize community engagement over a traditional focus on collecting and preserving museal objects. At many museal institutions, a shift from a focus on objects to a focus on audiences has taken place. Artistic practices in the visual arts, music, and theater are also increasingly taking on participatory forms. The world of cultural heritage has seen an upsurge in participatory governance models favoring the expertise of local communities over that of trained professionals. While museal institutions, artists, and policy makers consider participation as a tool for implementing diversity policy, a solution to social disjunction, and a form of cultural activism, such participation has also sparked a debate on definitions, and on issues concerning the distribution of authority, power, expertise, agency, and representation. While new forms of audience and community engagement and corresponding models for “co-creation” are flourishing, fundamental but paralyzing critique abounds and the formulation of ethical frameworks and practical guidelines, not to mention theoretical reflection and critical assessment of practices, are lagging. This book offers a space for critically reflecting on participatory practices with the aim of asking and answering the question: How can we learn to better participate? To do so, it focuses on the emergence of new norms and forms of collaboration as participation, and on actual lessons learned from participatory practices. If collaboration is the interdependent formulation of problems and entails the common definition of a shared problem space, how can we best learn to collaborate across disciplinary borders and what exactly can be learned from such collaboration?

This series of three volumes provides a groundbreaking study of the work of many of the most innovative and important British theatre companies from 1965 to the present. Each volume provides a survey of the political and cultural context; an extensive survey of the variety of theatre companies from the period, and detailed case studies of six of the major companies drawing on the Arts Council Archives to trace the impact of funding on the work produced. 1965–1979, covers the period often accepted as the 'golden age' of British Fringe companies, looking at the birth of companies concerned with touring their work to an ever-expanding circuit of 'alternative' performance venues. Leading academics provide case studies of six of the most important companies, including: * CAST, by Bill McDonnell (University of Sheffield, UK) * The People Show, by Grant Tyler Peterson (Brunel University London, UK) * Portable Theatre, by Chris Megson (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK) * Pip Simmons Theatre Group, by Kate Dorney (The Victoria and Albert Museum, UK) * Welfare State International, by Gillian Whitely (Loughborough University, UK) * 7:84 Theatre Companies, by David Pattie (University of Chester, UK).

Based on a four-year research project which highlights the important role of community organisations as intermediaries between community and culture, this book analyses the role played by cultural intermediaries who seek to mitigate the worst effects of social exclusion through engaging communities with different forms of cultural consumption and production. The authors challenge policymakers who see cultural intermediation as an inexpensive fix to social problems and explore the difficulty for intermediaries to rapidly adapt their activity to the changing public-sector landscape and offer alternative frameworks for future practice.

The Reception of Chinese Art Across Cultures is a collection of essays examining the ways in which Chinese art has been circulated, collected, exhibited and perceived in Japan, Europe and America from the fourteenth century to the twenty-first. Scholars and curators from East Asia, Europe and North America jointly present cutting-edge research on cultural integration and aesthetic hybridisation in relation to the collecting, display, making and interpretation of Chinese art and material culture. Stimulating examples within this volume emphasise the Western understanding of Chinese pictorial art, while addressing issues concerning the consumption of Chinese art and Chinese-inspired artistic productions from early times to the contemporary period; the roles of collector, curator, museum and auction house in shaping the taste, meaning and conception of art; and the art and cultural identity of the Chinese diaspora in a global context. This book espouses a multiplicity of aesthetic, philosophical, socio-cultural, economic and political perspectives, and encourages academics, students, art and museum practitioners to re-think their encounters with the objects, practices, people and institutions surrounding the study of Chinese art and culture in the past and the present.

This book presents a nuanced view of Northern Ireland, a place at once deeply mired in its past and seeking to forge a new future for itself as a ‘post-post-conflict’ place within the context of a changing United Kingdom, a disintegrating Europe, and a globalized world. This is a Northern Ireland that is conflicted, segregated, and marginalized within modern Europe, but also hopeful and forward looking, seeking to articulate for itself a new place in the contemporary world.