Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...

artificial hells
with photographs of the event (which resemble an exuberant party); reports
appeared in El Mundo and a number of magazines. But in fact, the Happening
never actually took place: it comprised only photographs staged for
media dissemination. The second press release revealed this construction,
seeking to expose the way in which the media operated, and served to
generate yet further press coverage. 10 Unlike Happenings in Europe and
North America during this period, which emphasised the existential thrill
of unmediated presence, the Happening for a Dead Boar existed purely as
information, a dematerialised circulation of facts. As such, it obliterated
the problematic dividing line between (fi rst- hand) participant and (secondary)
viewer, since there was no ‘original’ event to have attended in the fi rst
place. The media itself became the medium of the work, and its primary
content.
Earlier that year, between January and March 1966, Masotta had
visited New York, where he experienced a number of Happenings fi rst
hand. He was there to accompany Marta Minujín, whose environment
Un Batacazo (The Long Shot) was opening at Bianchini Gallery in
February 1966, and through her was introduced to many of the artists
associated with Pop and Happenings that he went on to discuss in El
‘Pop’ Art. 11 In the summer following this trip, Masotta and the reading
group, now joined by Oscar Bony, Leopoldo Maler and Miguel Angel
Telechea, produced Sobre Happenings (About Happenings), a Happening
composed of Happenings by other artists: two works by Claes
Oldenburg (including Autobodys, 1963), Carolee Schneemann’s Meat
Joy (1964) and an untitled work by Michael Kirby were re- performed as
one new synthetic Happening. 12 Importantly, the actions were based not
on fi rst- hand experience of these works, but on their descriptions in
magazines – in other words, they were already mediated. As with Total
Participation, the idea was to undermine Happenings’ insistence on
immediacy and presence, to challenge their exaggerated media status
and prod fun at the people who attended these events expecting to be
entertained. A live event was underpinned by complex layers of mediation
and analysis. Jacoby described Total Participation as addressing the
paradox between ‘the characteristics of the Happening (the lack of
mediation, direct communication with objects and persons, short
distance between the viewer and the viewed) and a great deal of mediation
between objects and events, the nonparticipation of the receptor’. 13
In line with their reading of Barthes’ Mythologies (1957), myth was
invoked and put to work in order to destroy myth.
It was in this highly intellectualised, analytical context that Masotta
produced his fi rst Happening in November 1966, Para inducir al espíritu
de la imagen (To Induce the Spirit of the Image). The work is distinctive
in terms of its aggressive attitude towards participants – although it was
not without precedents, as I will discuss below. Masotta’s unfl inching
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