ARTIFICIAL HELLS

je participe, tu participes, il participe
with which to continue the spirit of their project. Finally, it should be noted
that all three claimed a central role in the events of May 1968, despite occupying
distinct political positions: a left- of- centre technophilic populism
(GRAV), a sexually liberated anarchism (Lebel), and a dogmatic, anti- visual
Marxism (the SI).
The political context for these artistic activities is important to grasp.
The Cuban Revolution took place in 1959, providing renewed hope to the
left. Domestically, the late 1950s saw the collapse of the Fourth Republic
and the election in June 1958 of Charles de Gaulle, who rewrote the constitution
and inaugurated the Fifth Republic. He gradually withdrew French
troops from Algeria (granting it independence in 1962), which led to a
huge influx of immigrants populating appallingly basic bidonvilles (shanty
towns) in Lyon, Marseille and Nanterre – within sight of the overcrowded
university campus where the events of May 1968 began. Despite mass rural
migration to the cities and a rising consumer culture (whose imagery was
analysed by Roland Barthes in Mythologies, 1957), social mobility did not
become correspondingly flexible. De Gaulle’s presidency has since been
characterised as having two themes, ‘marrying the century one is living in’
and ‘dependent participation’, the latter phrase taken from the left- wing
sociologist Alain Touraine. 11 Touraine coined this phrase as a critical
descriptor of consumer society, but for de Gaulle it denoted a society based
on willing consent, and was to be celebrated. It is worth keeping in mind
these various resonances of participation. Some artists enthusiastically
made participation a foundational principle of their artistic practice, while
others vocally rejected it as a mode of artistic coercion equivalent to social
structures. 12 During May 1968, one could find graffiti proclaiming ‘To be
free in 1968 means to participate’, while at the same time the Atelier
Populaire produced posters showing a hand and pen, conjugating the
verb to more sceptical ends: ‘Je participe, tu participes, il participe, nous
participons, vous participez, ils profitent.’
In artistic circles, participation was primarily understood in terms of
interactive and kinetic art, and hailed as a popular new democratic mode.
Michel Ragon’s Vingt- cinq ans d’art vivant (1969) concludes with a chapter
on the ‘democratisation of art’: his signs of art’s new mass accessibility
include GRAV’s experiments with the game and labyrinth (discussed
below), which synthesise sculpture and spectacle. 13 His other indicators of
‘democratic art’ include collaborations with industry, such as GRAV’s
Nicolas Schöffer working with Philips; artists making unlimited multiples;
department stores organising exhibitions; and architectural projects synthesising
the arts in murals, mosaics and light projections. Frank Popper’s Art
– Action, Participation (1975) also makes an explicit connection between
participation and social equality; for him, the work of kinetic artists ‘helped
to lay the foundation of a new art, a truly DEMOCRATIC ART’. 14
Informed by cybernetics and alluding to a wide range of European case
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