Breaking the Fourth Wall: Proactive Audiences in the Performing Arts (original) (raw)
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Performance and Participatory Art
Art Inqiuiry, 2018
The relationship between participatory art and performance is complex. On the one hand, their affinity is recognized, because in both cases we are dealing with emphasizing the role of action, but on the other, this action is understood differently. If the first aspect is taken into account, in museum or gallery press releases the manifestations of participatory art are referred to as "performances"-sometimes accompanied by an adjective. The aim of the article is to take a closer look at this issue. The discussion begins by highlighting the fact that happenings (especially European) from the 1960s are more often considered as a reference point for participatory art than performance art. Claire Bishop points to the conscious socio-political criticism of the consumer society that appears in happenings. The author of the article argues that the structure of these activities may also be an argument. When discussing the rules of public participation in happenings and performance art, she cites Erika Fischer-Lichte's views that in the latter case a "feedback loop" should be created between the performer and the audience. Such a loop is not formed in the case of happenings and cannot be shaped in participatory art, where the artist is only one of the people participating in the action. The article examines examples of characteristic works based on the principle of participation: Rirkit Tiravanija, Tania Bruguera and Paweł Althamer. In none of them did the artist occupy a distinguished position, she/he did not affect the way the participants behaved, and she/he only created an opportunity for a community. In the first case, its formation was completely free, in the second-there were forms of pressure release from it, in the third-there was encouragement. Nowhere, however, did the artist define the rules of action, did not determine the stake, did not set goals. At the same time, while making the participants the creators of the course of the action, the question "What for?" remains important in participatory art, which lends it a political character.
The participatory agenda A post-critical, anticipatory intervention
Nordisk Kulturpolitisk tidsskrift, 2016
In this article we address the participatory agenda defined as outreach in Danish national cultural policies, tracing specificities to other Nordic and EU cultural policies as well (Bell & Oakley 2015). The article investigates the discursive link that these policies establish between participation, democracy and transformation, and argue that a range of paradoxes emerge once the agenda is translated at local cultural policy levels or by different institutions and adopted into daily practice. The thesis is that the agenda is a configuration of the “culture complex” as outlined by Tony Bennett (2013), which is to be understood as an “assemblage” of cultural apparatuses under the national policies’ reframing of “Bildung” as “participation”. We argue that that this complex has to be challenged in order for the participatory agenda to take a more – “radical” – democratic direction. Grounded in ideas of a “radical democracy” (Mouffe, 2014) and the “radical institution” (Bishop, 2013), respectively, we focus on key terms in the participatory agenda such as “access”, “agency” and “ownership”, and pursue a conceptual intervention in terms of a “post-critical”, “anticipatory” analysis and practice (Rogoff & Schneider, 2008). The intervention addresses three cases, illustrating three different cultural settings: a) non-profit, “free” art spaces b) the (art) museum, c) the so-called culture regions.
Kultura, 2020
Participatory agenda in arts and culture represents a cutting-edge issue in the discourse of cultural policy. It has been seen as one which could fulfil the widening gap between the promise and failure of cultural democracy and influence democratic deficiencies that culture is facing. This paper focuses on clarification of the term participation and participatory governance in culture from its theoretical origin to its articulations and interpretations in the field of culture specifically. Methodologically, the paper builds on the analysis of literature and policy framework. In the literature analysis of the diverse conceptualisations of the participation in the field of culture, most specifically, participation in the sense of power devolution, the paper explores the repository of work by Milena Dragićević-Šešić and her contributions to the theoretical framework of the participation discussion. These contributions unravel the legacies and understandings of participation and partici...
Calling Participation to Account: Taking Part in the Politics of Method
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