Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
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artificial hells<br />
Brazil in that it tends to be a history <strong>of</strong> isolated gestures by artists without<br />
a consistent oeuvre, trained in diverse backgrounds. 2 It is complicated<br />
fur<strong>the</strong>r by <strong>the</strong> interruptive character <strong>of</strong> increasingly coercive dictatorships<br />
(<strong>the</strong> Revolución Argentina <strong>of</strong> General Onganía 1966– 70, General Levingston<br />
1970– 71, <strong>and</strong> General Lanusse 1971– 73, <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> ‘Dirty War’ <strong>of</strong><br />
1976– 83), each <strong>of</strong> which imposed new forms <strong>of</strong> censorship <strong>and</strong> inhuman<br />
repression on its citizens. 3 Despite <strong>the</strong>se discontinuities, Argentina’s early<br />
reception <strong>of</strong> European semiotics <strong>and</strong> communications <strong>the</strong>ory gave rise to<br />
a consistent line <strong>of</strong> thinking among its artists. If <strong>the</strong> best examples <strong>of</strong><br />
Brazilian art during this period invite viewers to sense <strong>and</strong> to feel, <strong>the</strong>ir<br />
Argentinian counterparts seem to dem<strong>and</strong> that viewers think <strong>and</strong> analyse.<br />
This specifi cally analytic approach – combined with a willingness to<br />
subject participants to situations that have a distinctly brutal tenor –<br />
ensures that this body <strong>of</strong> work <strong>of</strong>fers a signifi cant counterpart to<br />
participatory art in North America <strong>and</strong> Western Europe. In <strong>the</strong> latter, <strong>the</strong><br />
immediacy <strong>of</strong> fi rst- h<strong>and</strong> relationships amongst viewers is staked as a challenge<br />
to <strong>the</strong> atomised social body <strong>of</strong> consumer capitalism, united only in<br />
its isolation; in Argentina, this model – synonymous with <strong>the</strong> Happenings<br />
– was challenged almost immediately <strong>and</strong> subjected to critical analysis via<br />
structuralism <strong>and</strong> media <strong>the</strong>ory.<br />
I. Social Sadism Made Explicit<br />
In some respects it is perverse to begin a case study on participation in<br />
Argentinian art by discussing Oscar Masotta (1930– 79), a writer <strong>and</strong> intellectual<br />
best known for introducing Lacanian psychoanalysis into Argentina.<br />
He made only three works <strong>of</strong> art during his lifetime, <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong>se are generally<br />
overlooked as idiosyncratic experiments that st<strong>and</strong> as an exception to his<br />
overall intellectual output. 4 And yet Masotta’s involvement with artistic<br />
production in <strong>the</strong> early 1960s was extensive <strong>and</strong> infl uential: he was closely<br />
engaged with contemporary art (writing key texts on Pop <strong>and</strong> coining <strong>the</strong><br />
term ‘dematerialisation’ 5 ) <strong>and</strong> organised a reading group for young artists,<br />
while also teaching at <strong>the</strong> Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, <strong>the</strong> epicentre <strong>of</strong><br />
Argentinian avant- garde production in <strong>the</strong> 1960s. 6 Masotta’s <strong>the</strong>oretical<br />
work was formative for <strong>the</strong> development <strong>of</strong> media art in Argentina <strong>and</strong> for<br />
defi ning <strong>the</strong> country’s reception <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> latest artistic imports from North<br />
America. However, his intellectual formation was marked by an orientation<br />
towards Europe, particularly France: after studying philosophy at <strong>the</strong><br />
University <strong>of</strong> Buenos Aires, he engaged with Marxism <strong>and</strong> existentialism in<br />
<strong>the</strong> 1950s, reading Sartre <strong>and</strong> Merleau- Ponty in Les Temps modernes, <strong>and</strong><br />
writing for <strong>the</strong> leftist journal Contorno. 7 In <strong>the</strong> 1960s he turned to structural<br />
linguistics <strong>and</strong> visual art, <strong>and</strong> his 1965 lecture ‘Pop <strong>Art</strong> <strong>and</strong> Semantics’<br />
(<strong>Art</strong>e Pop y Semántica) is one <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> earliest attempts to use linguistic analysis<br />
in <strong>the</strong> interpretation <strong>of</strong> works <strong>of</strong> art.<br />
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