What is contested in McBride’s Arena? Or, if the world is a stage, then where do I sit? (original) (raw)

Abstract

Reviewing Mark Wallinger’s exhibition State Britain in the national newspaper the Guardian, Adrian Searle asks, ‘Is State Britain a protest, a readymade, a simulation or an appropriation? It is all of these things – an installation, an institutional critique, an example of relational aesthetics. […] It makes us think of the mores of recent installation art, about the “public” nature of a space such as Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries and about the Britishness of the gallery itself – what is and is not exhibited here?’ Searle’s catalogue of twentieth century modes by which art has cast itself as political agent – readymade, institutional critique, etc. – ends with relational aesthetics. To his list I want to explore the possibility of adding theatricality, and to consider the ways in which it has and might be considered a mode of politicisation. In this paper, I will address and dispute arguments that the political potential of theatricality derives from its status as public space in which to model sociability; instead, following Rancière, I will argue that sensibility (rather than sociability) is theatre’s critical intervention.

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